


Hell & High Water

by mmerainbows



Category: Glee
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Drunk Sex, First Time, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-10 04:23:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 45
Words: 243,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmerainbows/pseuds/mmerainbows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt counted the days even though no one else did anymore, and for what, he didn’t know.  His dad died eight years ago, and he had no other family to speak of.  His days were monotonous and thankless as he hunted for the community he lived in.  Long gone were the days when he could dabble in music and fashion because that world no longer existed, and without those things - who was Kurt Hummel really?  Until the day an emergency transmission is received and what Kurt is forced to reconsider what is existing and what is truly living.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Foreword

 

 

 

_**"If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water." - Loren Eiseley** _

A few years ago I got my mail and was excited to see the latest issue of National Geographic. Generally I love the magazine because it occupies me when I'm in the bathroom and it has excellent pictures and infographics which are priceless to teachers. In this issue however, titled Water: Our Thirsty World, they showed the demand of water for humans and the lengths people go to in order to obtain their water needs. Juxtaposed to that was how much water was consumed in the process of things we take for granted - like clothing and food.

Because I've taught biology and chemistry, I already know how special water is. It defies rules that other compounds adhere to, and is a necessary component for life. On top of that, I was also reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman and already in an imaginative mood. Thus I came up with the concept of a world where humans had been forced away from the major bodies of water - which goes against how humans have settled throughout most of history.

It's a story concept I've become so attached to that I have several booklets full of character sketches and traits, possible situations and conflicts, as well as notes taken from survival guides and science references, but I'm still not skilled enough as a writer to take the first steps to writing that independent story.

As such, since this community has been so supportive of the fan-fiction I've written thus far, and because there are so many fellow authors whose constructive criticisms have helped tailor my writing, I thought I'd bring my world to the world of Klaine. Unlike my own story, the focus of course will be centered more on our boys and less on the fantastical elements of the world, however I'm hoping to get feedback on what people think of the world that will help me continue to build on the idea.

Part I is mostly complete as of the writing of this foreword, and if there is enough interest, I will happily continue to write this tale into Part's II and III.

I'd like to thank the community for giving me the chance to hone my writing skills on their fan-fiction hungry selves, the show itself for having been a light in a dark time of my life, and, of course, Chris Colfer and Darren Criss for both being amazing at what they do and give to us, but also for showing me that creativity is never a pointless venture.

I would also like to especially thank my beta-reader and friend SabbyPandawan/Stormwitha6lettername for keeping me occupied with RP and helping me stay sane in general.

At the end of part I, I will post a "chapter" with the trading cards already available on my tumblr that I made for this fanfic.


	2. Chapter 1: Exposition

 

 

_**“You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.” - Edwin Louis Cole** _

 

It was the ten year anniversary of the day the world changed for humanity.  At least, Kurt was pretty sure it was.  He was one of the few people who tried to still count time by days instead of seasons, finding the ambiguity of season ends and beginnings too discomforting.  He knew he was probably off - because of days lost to sickness, travelling, or leap years - but he was sure he was close.

Not that anyone else was going to care.  They certainly weren’t going to celebrate the fact.  People were too busy in the community preparing for the oncoming winter.  They needed to increase their food stores to get through it and the harvest this year hadn’t been spectacular.  It was up to people like Kurt and other scavengers to go to the abandoned cities and collect what they could from a time past.

Currently though, Kurt was waiting in a line to get his water ration for the day.  Water was what was precious in this new world.  They couldn’t live near any major bodies of water, like humanity had for thousands of years, so they lived off rainwater and the occasional underground source they’d discover.  Winter was better in terms of having water because the farmers would collect the snow and let it melt in the basins and cisterns they kept their water stores in.  There was never a shortage of snow in this place during the winter.  He still hadn’t been able to pinpoint the exact location on any of the maps he kept in his shack, but he was positive they were in what used to be Canada, somewhere in central Saskatchewan.  

Wherever it was - it was a safe haven for them.  Far enough away from major waterways and the oceans that The Others appeared to be disinterested in taking it over, and the people here along with it.  They could live here, in some semblance of their former existences, without being ruled or killed by those that changed all of their lives.

The Tides was what changed life for everyone on earth those ten years ago.  The Tides brought The Others - who ruthlessly overtook all the major coastal cities first before following the rivers to continue their conquest.  

Kurt had been at a William McKinley high school information night with his dad when the sirens went off.  What had turned into a night where he was checking out the high school he would be attending in the fall had turned out to be the beginning of his new life.  When the sirens went off and the warnings were broadcast over all TV signals and radio signals, Kurt and his dad had fled.  Initially the plan was to get somewhere remote.  Somewhere that wasn’t populated so they were less likely to be found.  That plan changed when humans realized that The Others were only interested in securing the major water sources.  Kurt and his father joined up with others from Lima and headed north, to where the geography teacher from William McKinley, who was in their group, said there was fewer links to the ocean and very few waterways compared to the rest of the continent.

That geography teacher had died during the year they slowly travelled north in vehicles that ran out of gas too soon causing them to have to continue on foot.  The teacher had Celiac’s disease, and when you were scavenging for food wherever and however you could, special diets couldn’t be taken into consideration.  Malnutrition was the culprit, at least according to the nurse that was in their group.  That nurse had survived and now ran their pseudo clinic in the community along with a midwife who had joined the community a few years ago.  With them was Micheal Chang, who was apprenticing under both of them to be another medic for the community.  Whenever Kurt and the other scavengers went to local cities, they would see if there were any medical books they could bring back for them, to help improve the quality of health care they had there.

The community wasn’t suppose to be a long term thing - at least, that’s what everyone had kept telling themselves and everyone else in the beginning.  It was safe though.  A remnant of a time long gone, when the railroad was the major means of travel and towns sprung up along it.  When this railroad had been abandoned though, the metal railway ties reclaimed by the company to use elsewhere, the town had dried up.  It had been a ghost town.  Now it was their home.

Most of the old buildings had been fixed up as people moved into them and they were earmarked for certain uses.  The old saloon became the dinner hall, where the chefs in the town ruled.  The old bank was a trading hub, run by people who couldn’t do anything very physical.  The doctors office was still a doctor’s office, where the nurse, midwife, and the medical apprentice kept their supplies and worked out of.  

A brothel, or it was a brothel, functioned as an old folks home.  Those who couldn’t do much to help anymore because of their age, or just poor health lived there.  They didn’t live too long out here.  It was cold, and none of the creature comforts that might have kept them alive in the past existed anymore.  People didn’t have time to visit them - too busy collecting water and resources each and every day.  Some angry murmurs would arise every now and then - those who think the elderly and impaired should be euthanised so they don’t drain resources they can’t hope to contribute to.  It was always silenced though.  People remembered their humanity and continued on.

Lots of the other buildings became makeshift apartments for the families that settled here.  Additional rooms and buildings were constructed around them so that the majority of the community’s population was right on the main street of the old ghost town.

Except for Kurt.

Kurt had constructed his own little shack about fifteen minutes outside of the town limits, alone and quiet.  That was how he kept himself safe.  It was just one room, and that was all Kurt needed since he was only ever there to wash himself, sleep, and occasionally read.  Tucked in amidst a group of trees at the edge of a nearby forest, Kurt was protected from a lot of the winds that came during blizzards, and the snow didn’t pile up so much around his little home because so much of it caught on the tree branches above the shack.  He had a small fire pit in the centre to help keep him warm, and his bed was a stack of deer pelts from all the hunting he did.  It certainly didn’t have the give his bed back in Lima did, but it was definitely warm in the winter.

Everything else was stacked.  His few clothes, his tailoring and mechanic supplies, and his bow and arrows.  It seemed silly to him now how much time he had spent concerning himself with fashion before The Tides.  It definitely wasn’t a concern now.  Clothing had to be functional.  Warm and durable and comfortable - nothing less or more.  His dad would have been amused to see how many flannel shirts Kurt now kept - acquisitions from scavenging trips.  His dad…

His dad died two years after The Tides.  It was just when they had settled here and the two of them were living in one of the rooms of an old hotel.  His dad had a heart attack, and despite all of the efforts of the nurse, he died there.  The nurse had told him that if they had a hospital, if they had the medical supplies, if they had an ambulance to get him there, then maybe, just maybe, his dad would have pulled through.  

After that was when Kurt built his own shack, away from everyone else.  He was alone, with no family, and no friends to speak of at that point in time.  He still mourned for his dad, but he knew he wasn’t special.  Everyone out here had lost people.  Some had lost whole families.  You just kept on going, creating a life that was, at the most, acceptable.

The skills his father had taught him growing up became more valuable than his knowledge of fashion or Broadway.  He helped work on cars and vans in the early days of the community, before they ran out of gasoline to fuel the vehicles.  Now he mainly serviced the solar generators they had for the chefs and medics to use.  Occasionally he tinkered with one of the old, abandoned vehicles too - but only as a means to remember his dad.  Nowadays, they used horses and their own feet to get from place to place.

Everyone in the community had roles to play.  There were the chefs, the caretakers, farmers, guards, and scavengers.  Kurt was a few things in the community.  Because of his time spent in his dad’s shop, he was considered the local mechanic - even though each passing year led them to having fewer and fewer motors to take care of.  In addition he had taught himself how to hunt and track, which kept him busy every day to make sure there was enough food for everyone, and allowed him to substitute himself as a guard when they were short.  He also participated in the scavenging efforts.   

Scavenging was dangerous - at least it was in theory.  It took them to the cities, which ran the risk of having them encounter The Others.  However, in the past ten years, they had only caught sight of one of The Others once, and they had all ran before they even saw if that one had seen them in return.  Kurt hadn’t even seen it for himself, running based on the word of one of his comrades.  The Others were dangerous, with powers no human could have fathomed outside of fairy tales, and they didn’t seem to have a lot of regard for humans given how quickly they cut the ones down who lived on the coasts.  Humanity was scattered now.  Their own community, as they were told by nomadic groups, was the largest that seemed to exist now in North America.  Occasionally they took in some of those nomads, but only if it was agreed upon by every member of the community.  They had yet to say no to anyone who wanted to join, but everyone still wanted their say regardless.

New additions to the community were the best source of information on how things were everywhere else.   Over the years they had found out that most people lived nomadically, or in very small groups - usually family based.  Scavenging was still the main way people got their food, and the fact that the community had set up small farms to grow their own vegetables was unheard of.  Their methods of capturing and storing water too were unprecedented.  All rainwater they could collect, was collected - in everything from large basins to pots.  It was then kept in water bottles which could be refilled after use.  They rationed it out, even when they didn’t necessarily need to after a big blizzard which brought tons of snow down, so there was always a surplus just in case.

The downside was that most people in the community only ever washed themselves down every two to three days.  Kurt was probably the only one who dedicated part of his daily water ration to sponging himself off.  He still, after everything, could not stand to be dirty for longer than absolutely necessary.  He even used soap daily.

Part of it was he didn’t want to get sick.  The few times Kurt had come down with a cold or flu, he had been trapped in his bed, alone with his thoughts and he was the first to admit he wasn’t good company.  His mind would float between the past and the present.  Remembering how things used to be, and what they had become.  How even in this new world, he was still an outcast - though for different reasons.  His former self seemed so naive to him now.  Back then he was worried about fitting in, and making it big one day on Broadway.  Broadway, which he was sure didn’t even exist anymore since it was on the coast.  What he did miss though was the hope he used to have.  The hope that things would get better for a kid like him.

On the road to the community, he had told his dad he was gay, and his dad had been fine with it.  It didn’t really matter anymore if someone was gay or lesbian or transgendered… they were all humans, and as wonderful as it was that people finally seemed to realize that, it was because The Others had come.  You were human or you weren’t and that was it.

However, he was teased still - not for being gay or for his high pitched voice, but because of his pale skin and the arches in his ears.  They weren’t pointed by any means, but it was enough for some of the other kids he would have gone to school with to exclude him and call him an Other.

Depending on who you spoke to, the Others had different names - The Serpents, Hellborn, Demons… it didn’t matter really to Kurt.  To Kurt, they were the source of humanity’s suffering and that was that.  However, even though The Others apparently had different skin tones, according to the people they took into the community, the ones that had been seen those first days on TV were pale, like Kurt.  

He had been bullied, out of sight from his dad, during the long trek to the north.  The other kids had called him an Other, a demon bastard, and other hateful things because of the color of his skin and the fact that he had those damned high arches in his ears.  He had even started wearing ballcaps to hide the tops of his ears.

They had laid off once Burt had died, at least… some did for awhile.  But now, even eight years after his father’s death, he was mostly ignored by most people in the community - even when they wanted his technical help.  So he lived alone, away from all of them, free to do what he wanted when he wanted.

It wasn’t all bad though.  From turning in his hunting kills, he had made friends with Brittany, one of the chefs.  She was a persistently chipper woman with blonde hair always held back in a long braid so it wouldn’t get into the food she made.  Making friends with Brittany led him to befriending Santana, a fellow guard and scavenger, who was Brittany’s pair.  

In the community, since marriage was no longer a legal issue, people paired up when they decided to commit to one another.  Most people had paired off, since having sex was now one of the few pleasures left in life and people were more than happy to commit to someone who wanted to share that particular act with them.

Kurt however, was on his own in that regard too.  The only other person he had discovered to also be gay was one of his former tormentors, David Karofsky, and even though David was much kinder to him now, Kurt couldn’t forget some of the things David had said and done to him in those early years.  He still had the scars.

Kurt was also friendly with another hunter, Quinn, and her pair Noah.  Quinn had gotten pregnant while they were all still on the road and not long after they settled in the community, had given birth to a daughter - Beth.  Quinn had said on several occasions to Kurt that if they had still been living in that old time, that a teen pregnancy would have been frowned upon and she probably would have had to give Beth up.  Kurt suspected that Quinn was actually thankful on some level for the changes that had occurred in the world because it meant that Beth’s birth was celebrated by the community as a miracle, and no one ever questioned Quinn and Noah becoming parents so young.

Now and then, Kurt would watch Beth for Noah and Quinn when they were scheduled at the same time.  Noah was a guard and had a set rotation schedule while Quinn was busiest during the spring hunts - which sometimes meant they both needed to be away at the same time.  In the beginning, it was difficult.  Kurt had never babysat when he was younger, but he took to it quickly and according to Noah and Quinn, Beth took to him, so he always offered his help when it was needed.  Now that she was eight, Kurt didn’t get the chance to watch Beth anymore and missed her sassy attitude which Kurt appreciated more than her parents did.  It was interesting to watch her grow up in this new world where it was all just normal to her.  She would never know or understand how things were before this.

That was true of all the kids in the community.  There weren’t that many children as most pairs didn’t want to bring up a child in this new world and, to that end, condoms and other forms of birth control were always in huge demand.  The ones that did exist were doted on by everyone though, and were all taught by one of his would be classmates, Rachel Berry, and her pair Finn Hudson.

They had set up a little one-room school house a few years ago when it had become clear that this town was more than a temporary home.  All the children attended during the day while their parents worked.   The curriculum wasn’t unlike what could be expected at a school back when he was younger, but with the addition of concepts like ‘How to Collect Water’, ‘How to Avoid Others’ and ‘Animal Identification’.

The majority of the community was between twenty and sixty.  All the advances in medicine humanity had attained in the last few hundred years were done with.  People no longer lived as long, infant mortality was high, and children under five also had a high mortality rate.  Without the drugs, vaccines, and other medical developments people had been accustomed to in the old world, they had a hard time staying alive when they were little, and lasting as long when old age ailments got them.  The few who did survive were weak and stayed in that repurposed brothel, watching everyone work around them while they waited for death.

In the first few years, they had lost many people not because of cancer, or sickness, but from suicide.  When it became clear this was their new existence, that there was no one to save them from this, that’s when people lost their minds.

Water was precious, but so was sanity.

That had tapered off though, and the people lost were replaced over time by those that stumbled upon their community and wanted to stay with them.  The bodies were burned and the names etched into a wooden wall they had erected to honor those who were gone.

His dad’s name was on there.

Kurt gave his head a shake and took another step forward in the line.  Thinking about his dad was still hard for him, even so long after.  It was why he kept himself so busy.  Hunting, scavenging, baby-sitting, tailoring, mechanic work, and any odd jobs he could help out with.  Aside from his small circle of friends though, it was largely thankless work.  Not that Kurt was expecting thanks because someone had to do it, and without any family waiting for him at his home, he had the time to give.  

At one point, he had even considered trying to push away his natural inclination towards guys in order to pair off with a woman.  That’s what Karofsky had done.  It wasn’t so much for the sex as it was for the companionship anyhow.  Someone to relax with and share your troubles.  Someone to keep you warm and wanted at night.  Maybe even someone to have a child with.  Start a family.

Another step towards his ration.

But no, starting a family would be irresponsible.  As much as he loves the kids in the community, he still doesn’t feel safe in this new world, and how could he bring a child into a world that isn’t safe?  If The Others didn’t eventually find them, then there was still a multitude of other things that could end them.  Sickness, lack of supplies, lack of proper sanitation, and the biker gangs.

Whereas most humans were happy to survive and live after the others came, some took the extra step and formed small gang units - plundering and stealing what they could from other humans as they decided their lives were more important.

It was the reason the community had guards posted all the time.  Not actually because of The Others - because, quite frankly, if they came no human guard would be able to stop them.   On their travels to the settlement they had encountered and been mugged by many biker gangs who stole their gas, their food, and anything else they deemed worthy.  Some were more ruthless than others and even took advantage of some of the women and young girls.  

In the community itself, biker gangs had only come close a few times.  How they still managed to find good fuel was a mystery for Kurt, especially after the first three years, but they came to the community demanding food and supplies and always ended up turning around when they saw the arrows and knives pointed at them from all directions.

He made it to the head of the line, accepted his three bottles from Tina, a general worker, thanked her and started back to his shack.  He was meeting several others later today for a scavenging in one of the towns they hadn’t visited much, one they hoped still had something of value to bring back.  

The air was tinged with just a hint of cold.  Winter would be coming soon and it reminded Kurt that he needed to make himself new gloves.  The ones he had been wearing had holes worn through where he held his bow and string while hunting in the winter.  Wearing gloves while hunting made him aim poorer, but cold fingers wasn’t something he tolerated well.  He should probably repad his boots while he was at it.

That was the trade off of course though.  This cold climate, where winter ruled half the year and so much time was spent stoking fires and bundling up in excessive layers, in exchange for better access to water through the snow, and the safety of a location set apart from waterways.  

Kurt was a decent shot though.  Growing up it was something that had never crossed his mind to do - hunting anyhow.  Now, each year in the little competitions they held in the community, Kurt won the archery contest.  There was no prize, other than the prestige of being the best anyhow, but it was something that gave him a little bit of respect anyhow.  Enough that people had stopped bugging him about his skin tone, which had just gotten even more pale moving to a sun-lacking location, and his stupid ears.

He still wore hats to hide them, though now they had the added function of keeping his head and ears warm.  

Even if the old wive’s tale was true that hats made you bald.

It wasn’t like he had anyone to impress out here anyhow.

When he returned to his shack, he hung his jacket up on the nail protruding by the doorway in the wall.  The shack only gave him a few inches of headroom - he had built this place as simply as possible, not thinking it would still be his home so long after.  Every year he patched the holes in the walls with clay from below the dirt and put a new ceiling on it since he hadn’t figured out how to stop the ceilings from sagging and warping over time.  Aside from the pit in the center of the small room, he had the dirt floor covered with a few carpets he had brought back with him during scavenging.  The bed took up the whole area to the right of the door, and everything else was on the left.

Kurt discarded his clothes then on the bed, stripped naked in the middle of his little home and shivered while he poured one of the bottles into a pot which was sitting on the coals of his firepit.  Time to wash.

He grabbed a cloth and a sliver of soap and then dipped the cloth into the warming water, wiping it up and down his body in well practiced strokes, covering himself entirely before using his soap sliver to rub bubbles into his more needy areas - face, pits, and crotch, before taking the cloth to the water again, now much warmer, and washing that soap off with the water on the cloth.

He remembers being in elementary school and the teacher telling them all about saving and conserving water.  The kids in the class would agree to turn off the taps when they weren’t being used and only water their gardens once a week - even though most of those promises were broken within a few days.  Now no one wastes any drops.  When Kurt finishes his bath, he puts his dirty socks into the pot.  The water is shallow, but it’s enough to get them clean.  Socks are worth their weight in gold here.  A good pair is well taken care of because they discovered in the first year here that no one wants to endure frostbite in their toes.

God he would kill for even a cold thirty second shower now.

His fear of being sick is what kept him away from apprenticing with the group of medics in town.  He was singled out a few years ago as having the intellect for it, and the steady hands, but he couldn’t stomach having to deal with death so closely.  It was one of the factors that kept him from getting too close to anyone aside from his small pack of friends.  He didn’t want to have to mourn anyone as deeply as he had, and still did, his parents.

Everyone had changed like that though.  Quinn, who had been a beautiful little princess years ago, was now hard and tough, her hair always cropped short so it didn’t get in her way.  Santana had always been lean and strong, but now she had the scars to prove herself.  Noah was the strongest of them all, if only because he had the build and bone structure to support having that much muscle.  Finn, once a naive and chubby boy was now hardened by reality and solidly built.   Mike, who used to entertain everyone with his ability to dance, was now only letting his fingers move so nimbly as he worked on patients and tried helping with emergency surgeries.  Brittany… well she was still as cheerful and kind as ever, but when you looked her in the eyes closely enough, you could see the sadness behind them.  

This was how they adapted.  In the end they were only one type of animal on this planet, and now subject to the rule of the superior species - the Others.

* * *

 

“Anything in there?” Kurt barked back into the shop where Santana and Quinn were scouring for any medicine they could find.

“Not even a bloody tylenol.  It looks like someone else has been through here… but who knows how long ago…” was the grumbled reply.  Kurt nodded and kept looking through the broken window.  He was keeping his eyes open for any patrols, or anything even remotely threatening.

Like last year, when of all things, a wolf had jumped into the store they were going through and tried to get a bite out of Santana.  Quinn took it down before it laid a tooth against her skin, and that night they ate wolf.  It had a very odd flavour - but the variety was appreciated.

The cities and towns had been reclaimed by the earth, and the only ones who stayed in them anymore, at least as far as Kurt had seen, were the animals who had made dens out of many old homes and shops.  While the Others patrolled out here, they never camped in the cities.  Rumors suggested that their camps were under the water.  Quite frankly, Kurt didn’t care where they camped - so long as they stayed away.

A few more minutes of shuffling and digging in the rooms behind them and the girls reappeared, “Not a damn thing.  Let’s check out another site.”

Kurt nodded, and waited until Santana led the way.  She always went first.  That’s how it was.  She was the most elite guard among them, so she would get the first shot at any kills.

That being said, they were always careful, and while Santana had scars from animals and human gangs they had encountered during scavenging, she had none from the Others.  They never took that risk if they could help it.  The closest they had come was three years ago, when Quinn said she could see them rising from the river.  They took off immediately when she had said it.  There was nothing to be gained by sticking around to confirm it.

The next establishment they went into was one of those pharmacies that doubled as a gift shop.  He remembered how his mother would take him to one like it when he was younger, sniffing the perfumes and talking about which figurines they preferred while the pharmacist got her prescription ready.

This one though look like a riot had passed through it - which it probably had.  When the Others invaded the cities, people grabbed what they could.  Those who were left living after the first strikes raided stores for things they thought would be valuable.  Over time, human gangs and other communities did raids of their own.  Eventually these old cities would have nothing left to offer them and then they would all truly live off the land like their ancestors had.

In the meantime, the girls would gather what little they could find while Kurt kept their eyes open and alert.  Kurt always had his bow readied, and at the end of the day he knew his arm would be sore from the pressure put on it so continuously, but again, it wasn’t worth the risk not to.

“Ooo.. some amoxicillin.”  Quinn preened from the back room where she had gone to gather anything she could find.  Kurt smirked a little.  Ten years ago, no one would have been excited to have found penicillin lying around, now it was like a miracle.

They discovered a few more items that the medics would be happy about, as well as some chocolate bars - which were really not that exciting.  If there was one thing that had lasted through The Tides, it was prepackaged junk food.  He remembered living off the stuff while on their journey north.  He could really do without it - especially since they no longer had dentists and dental plans to take care of their teeth.

A few more items were stuffed into their packs - toothbrushes (thank goodness), soap (could never get enough of that), nail polish (apparently the girls still wanted to look pretty), baby formula (most women breastfed when they had their babies, but they found the formula was useful for those really sick who couldn’t eat whole food), as well as a myriad of other odds and ends.

Then there was the real miracle.

“Tampons!” Shrieked Santana, holding up a box triumphantly.

“Santana… I will give you all my chocolate bars and a water bottle for that.” Quinn immediately offered as she moved towards Santana to see the item in question.

“Oh hell no.  This is mine.  I am going to forgo stinky old nappies this month I tell you what!” Santana made a little whoop and Quinn grumbled under her breath about selfish bitches.

“Both of you, just shut up.  Do you want to draw attention to us?”

“Maybe if it gets Santana killed so I can have those…” Quinn uttered under her breath, tossing Santana another irritated glance which was returned with a smug, cocky smile as Santana put the box into her backpack.

“Next!” Santana declared once she had packed away her prize and led them down to the next store, and the next, and the next - until their bags were all full and night was creeping up on them.  

They found an apartment building and set themselves up in a room on the top floor, where they could eat take turns watching out the window throughout the night - not that it stopped Kurt from tossing and turning.  He was never settled when they were in a city.  He loved his friends, but didn’t trust his own safety enough with them watching out for him.

It was always depressing going into someone’s home, seeing their pictures, and the remnants of their life.  Wondering if they were some of the few to get away, or some of the many to be swallowed up by the waters.  There were no bodies when The Tides came - they were all taken back by the oceans, seas, and waterways.

In this house were pictures of a young woman, long brunette hair and dark brown eyes, always with a younger male version of herself.  Were they brother and sister? he wondered.  She didn’t look that old after all.  Or maybe she was his mother and maybe that would explain the tiny apartment with no indication of a father anywhere.  

Whoever they were, they were long gone.

Kurt took the first watch, and his friends passed looks between themselves knowingly.  Too often Kurt would take the first watch and then allow the second and third watch to be skipped while he stayed up.  He would let them sleep since he wouldn’t be able to.

But they were also long past fighting with him on the issue.  If there was one thing he was, it was stubborn.  He wouldn’t eat the fattiest parts of a kill even if there was nothing else left to eat, he never let himself sleep past sunrise, and he never ‘took it easy’ despite how many of the mother hens of the community insisted he did.  He was always there to help out and contribute as much as he could.  If he died from working too much, it would be alright.  He hadn’t paired off, so he could do that extra bit to help out.

Before his friends dropped off to sleep, Quinn turned on the walkie talkie and sent a message back to the community to check in, and also make sure all was well there.  After years of not being attacked, they were still insanely vigilant about making sure all was alright still.  They had all lost one home, they didn’t want to lose another, and Quinn had a daughter to look out for now.

Then it was silent aside from the light snores from his friends and the bugs and birds that made the occasional chirrup or creek.  Sometimes he would hear a wolf or coyote howl, but otherwise he was alone with the night.  

Looking at the city at night was nothing like looking out of his shack at night.  He could play pretend in his mind.  Envision this place without all the plant overgrowth and with people walking up and down the streets, cars honking and driving all around, and no sign of danger anywhere.

Sometimes he would put himself out there in his fantasies.  Sometimes he would be the music store owner, helping match people to the music that moved them.  Sometimes he was a tailor, making clothing that made people look better than they thought they could ever look as it hid all their imperfections.  Sometimes he was a barista, running around like crazy to fill everyone’s coffee orders.

In all his fantasies, there was someone to go home to, and his dad was alive and remarried, having met some wonderful woman that made him happy and took care of him so Kurt felt okay about leaving the nest to go live with a boyfriend.  Sometimes he envisioned celebrities as his boyfriend, sometimes just random people.  No matter what though, his fantasies always had him feeling loved from that person, and he was always eager to go home to them.

When he was feeling especially adventurous, Kurt would also imagine a home with children.  His father would visit and swing a little girl up in his arms, laughing with delight while Kurt readied a big supper, complaining to his boyfriend about how they needed a bigger place to seat everyone while the imagined boyfriend would laugh it off and pat him on the back.  

Then Kurt could come back to his own reality - fatherless, boyfriendless, and definitely childless.  His home barely fit him, let alone anyone else, and he hadn’t cooked for himself in what seemed like ages.  He seemed to recall enjoying baking as a means to soothe himself when he was upset.  Now he had to settle for shooting rabbits with an arrow.

He also wouldn’t know how a real job would work.  He had been too young when The Tides began to understand how the economy really functioned.  As far as he knew, you did a job, you got paid, and then you spent that money on things you wanted.  The older members of the community sometimes joked about how grand it was not to have to pay a mortgage or a car loan anymore, but somehow Kurt felt he’d rather be paying those things than existing as he did.

And it was just existing.  He didn’t know how to define it, but there was a difference between existing and living, and he knew he was doing more of the former than the latter.

He leaned into the shelf of the window, keeping an eye out.  This was a small town though, and they hadn’t even run into any animals, let alone any people.  It was actually quite peaceful.  Perhaps they’d bring the horses back here and use them and the wagon to haul some mattresses and other larger items back to the community.  It didn’t seem like anyone had been there in quite some time.

But of course, Kurt thought that too soon.

In the distance he could see a rise of dust in the air, and a loud hum that grew as the dust came closer to the town.  He called back to the girls who got up without question and grabbed their weapons while he watched through the window.

It wasn’t coming from the direction of the river this town had been built along, it was from the other direction, and that humming.

Had to be a gang.

“Can you estimate how many there are of them?” Santana asked as she looked over Kurt’s shoulder to the group heading their way.

He squinted, something was off about this particular group.  For starters, those engines didn’t sound like motorcycle engines, and the build of the machine’s they were riding were too wide.

But he could pick out individual riders from this distance, not their faces or any other details, but he could see each of the individual dots they made on the landscape.

“We’re looking at about twenty.  Builds suggest most or all of them are male. Better to just hide out and hope they pass through.  Let the community know - though... they don’t look like they’ll be heading in the direction of the community.”

Quinn immediately got on the walkie talkie while Santana squatted and watched through the window with Kurt.  It quickly became clear why things were off when the gang started coming closer, they weren’t riding motorcycles, they were riding all-terrain vehicles (ATV’s).  That was new.  Kurt squinted to get a closer look.  They were indeed all men, or at least, some of them might have been ugly women.  Their ATV’s were all colors and brands and each one looked like it had been personalized with names on the sides that Kurt couldn’t make out.  He reminded himself they needed to find a new pair of binoculars one of these days since the last pair had fallen out of a tall window when Santana had dropped them while she argued with Quinn about who was on watch while Kurt went to relieve himself.  If they weren’t so good at what they respectively did, Kurt wouldn’t have put up with it.

The group stopped and parked their ATV’s as if they were regular vehicles back in a time when how you parked mattered.  They were at the edge of the town, though on the same street, and still a ways away from where Kurt and the girls were camped.

“If they go into that store, we go out the back of this building and run to the horses.” Kurt ordered.

There was no argument, and as Santana and Kurt watched each and every one of the gang go into the shop at the end of the street, they made a mad dash down the stairs and out the back of the apartment. They didn’t stop and they didn’t look back until they reached their destination - the nearby forest where the horses were in the makeshift corral they had made for them.

As Kurt pulled himself up on one of the horses, he glanced back to the town, confirming they hadn’t been followed and probably weren’t seen while Quinn and Santana were already riding their horses away.

They were safe for now.


	3. Chapter 2: Transmission

 

**_Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it. - Lao Tzu_ **

 

“Help…*bzzzz* … someone help! *bzzzz*  Can anyone out there hear me? *bzzzzz* My friend, he’s hurt.  *bzzzzz* Is there anyone who can hear this? *bzzzzzz* He’s  in so much pain and his leg…. *bzzzzzzz* Please someone…..”

The transmission kept going in the background of the trading hub where representatives from each of the major groups in the community were meeting to discuss it.  Kurt kept an ear on the desperate pleas of the man who had been trying to get someone to respond to him for well over an hour now.  Every now and then another voice would pipe in, usually to tell the man on the frequency that it was hopeless or that there was no one else up in this area.

It wasn’t that there wasn’t, it was just that they first had to come to an agreement as to whether they even would respond.

Paranoia was high.  Even though the man in the transmission was clearly upset, people wondered if it was an act.  A gang perhaps that wanted to get into the community and were trying to lure them into a trap.

“It has to be those guys we saw on those quads yesterday Kurt.” Quinn noted from where she sat beside Noah who had Beth in his lap.  Young Beth, who, tried as they might to get her off to home, always forced her way into these conversations citing that she was the representative of the children in the community. It was questionable on whether or not she was elected into that position or just assumed the role.  Whatever the case, she took it seriously.  Sitting there, stone faced as she listened to the transmission and the adults arguing overhead, Kurt could see the wheels turning in her head.

“It’s plausible but it could be another group…” Kurt responded to Quinn.  The group on ATV’s could have left the area and some other group could be around.  Nothing he had heard on the transmission had noted how many people were there, or what they were riding, or even what their position was.  The amount of static suggested that they were close or along the circumference of the signal frequency - almost out of range.  If it had been the group on ATV’s, and they had continued south from the town, then Kurt could narrow down where the signal was coming from.

“God it’s swollen up so much… *bzzzz*... We’re almost out of painkillers to give him….*bzzzz*  Can anyone hear me out there? *bzzzz*  Just give it up Blaine! *bzzzz* You have any better ideas Sebastian?! *bzzzz* Is there anyone out there?”

“We can’t risk it guys.  What if there’s a whole group there ready to attack us and take our stuff?” Santana snipped.  She was one of the ones against responding clearly.

“But what if they do just need help?” Brittany asked of her, doe-eyed.  

“Then they deal with it themselves.  I’m not risking my hide or yours to help some stranger!”

“If the guy is hurt and his leg is swelling, it could be anything from an infection to a break.” Mike noted, having been tuned to the broadcast until that point, writing down notes about what the speaker, Blaine, had been saying about his apparently wounded friend.  “He could need something as simple as a cast, or as difficult as an amputation.  Problem is, even a cast requires him to be brought back here so we can use that x-ray machine we have hooked up.  No way the machinery can travel.”

Rumblings and sighs went around the room.  It wasn’t just about going out there now, it was about going out there and bringing some stranger back.

“In a worst case scenario, we need to decide now what we’re doing though - because if there is an infection in the blood, he needs medical attention as soon as possible.” Mike added, the chorus of grumblings increasing as a result.

“Let him die then.  I don’t want to risk my family to someone stupid enough to get hurt out in the world.” Noah grunted, one of his hands on Quinn’s shoulder, the other on Beth’s.

“There’s already few enough of us humans left in the world and you’re talking about letting one more die?  Like they’re nothing?” Mercedes retorted.  Hands on her hips, she was clearly in a defensive position.  Mercedes oversaw most of the workers in the community, making shift schedules and deciding on priorities.  She was a bulldog when it came to getting her way and everyone knew not to cross her.  She might have been strict, but she was also generally right.

“What do you think Kurt?” Quinn asked then, looking over to him where he was leaned up against the wall, hands rested on the top of his bow he had standing in front of him with his head balanced on those hands as he listened in to everyone.  

Kurt sighed softly, looking around at the eyes focused on him, and then to the radio receiver, still blaring the voice of Blaine, “I think that I can’t make that call but I will support whatever decision is made.”

Some eye-rolls, some gaped mouths, and a lot of evident frustration was the result of that statement and everyone went back to arguing as Kurt again listened in.

In his heart, he knew the right choice, the moral choice, was helping the young man, if indeed he was truly hurt and it wasn’t a ploy to steal resources.  That’s what his dad would have expected of him, and his mother too for that matter.  They had always opened their doors and their hearts to those in need.  When he was five, they had taken in one of Burt’s employees and his family when the bank had taken their home after the wife had gotten ill and couldn’t work, leading to them being unable to pay their bills.  For the few months it took that family to get back on their feet, the Hummel house was crowded and incessantly noisy.  Kurt was too young to appreciate why he suddenly had to share a room with the booger-eating son of his dad’s employee, and made his complaints known.  He regretted making those complaints as soon as he got older and more attuned to how the world wasn’t fair.  He never did get the chance to tell either his mom or dad how that event had educated him more on their values then anything they ever said to him directly.  How much they must have sacrificed of their own income and privacy in order to help another set of human beings.

In his mind, he knew it wasn’t such an easy choice though.  There were a lot of people in this community, and if it was a set-up, they were risking more than just resources.  People’s lives were at stake.  Some humans had become ruthless in the aftermath of The Tides, living only for themselves at the cost of those around them.  Raping and killing had happened to more than one small group that had joined the community - always from a human gang, and Kurt wasn’t about to let anything happen to any of the people he had vowed to protect here.   Even if they were being honest about what was going on in that transmission, they had to consider that it was almost winter and taking in another group would come at a cost, especially if it was that group of twenty riders they had seen yesterday.  That would be a huge drain on their resources.

“Just stop fighting!” Beth abruptly yelled then, pulling Kurt out of his thoughts and silencing everyone else.  Her small body was packed with such a loud voice.  On more than one occasion, Finn had noted she had leadership qualities, and hearing her then, Kurt knew that one of those qualities must be getting everyone’s attention.

When everyone was looking at her, Beth started speaking.  “This is stupid.  You should be going to help.  Missus Jones is right.  There’s only so many humans left and if you let one die you’re all gonna teach me and the other kids that letting other humans die is okay.”

“Beth, sweetie, that’s not -” Quinn started and stopped when Beth glowered at her mother, clearly not alright with being interrupted.  They exchanged looks for a moment, ones that Kurt couldn’t read and were simply silent communication between mother and child before Beth went on.

“Just take the toughest people to help so if it is a trap they can beat ‘em and only bring the hurt guy back here if it isn’t - ‘cause it’s not like he’d be able to do much if he’s hurt anyhow.  Mister Chang said you don’t have a lot of time.  So stop fighting like toddlers and go help people!”

The indignant looking eight year old crossed her arms over her chest, looking around the room and waiting for anyone to challenge her on the matter.  Adults looked between one another silently until Mike finally acknowledged her with a nod which got the other people in the room nodding in agreement.  Noah patted his daughter on the back with a proud smirk covering his face and Santana threw her hands up in the air, bewailing the fact that an eight year old was smarter than any of them, and then they all got to work.

Mercedes went to get a wagon hitched up to horses, while Noah and Quinn argued over which of them would be going since they had long ago agreed that neither of them would go on a mission together lest something happened that would leave Beth an orphan.  Noah won though, since he was a guard and better prepared to fight.  Quinn and Beth kissed him goodbye and left then as well, since it was long past Beth’s bedtime anyhow.

Santana and Brittany also said farewell, even though Brittany was going to get some food stores for the wagon and would probably see Santana again before they left.  

Kurt just stood there, quiet as he had been before.  He supposed if he had someone left he cared about deeply, he would be kissing and hugging that person too, but instead he only had himself.  There was nothing for him to do besides wait to go.  He had been hunting with his bow when they called him regarding the broadcast, and there was nothing else he needed.  

He ignored Mike as the doctor-in-training looked at him wordlessly before he went too in order to get the supplies he would need from the medical storage.  Mike always looked like he had something to say to Kurt, some wisdom to give, but he never did say anything, just gave him those looks that make Kurt squirm inside.  Kurt felt like he was being judged each and every time it was done.

When he was alone, Kurt realized that he was the one expected to pick up the walkie and let the man on the other end know help was coming.  They had all left him there to take care of what they needed to get, or to say goodbye to those they loved.  Even Noah and Santana had left to get a few more guards just in case it was a trap.

Leaving his bow balanced against the wall, Kurt walked to the received and looked at it for a moment, listening to the voice on the other end.

“Is anyone there? *bzzzz* Please, someone… anyone…. *bzzzz* He’s fallen asleep and I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing…. *bzzz*  Someone respond please! *bzzzzzzzz* My friend needs medical assistance…. *bzzzzz* His leg looks horrible…. *bzzzzz* Please, I don’t want to lose him….*bzzzzz*”

His heart felt like someone had grabbed it and squeezed it in their hands at that last bit.  I don’t want to lose him.  Kurt remembered sitting by his dad, crying out to everyone circled around them when his dad had fallen from the heart attack.  He had cried out that very same line and then whispered it over and over to himself as he looked at his dad on the ground.  Even after the nurse, Carole, had done her best to try and revive him and Burt had gone cold and Carole had been pulled back by her son, Finn, Kurt still whispered it.  After awhile he started to say that he couldn’t lose his dad, and then, finally, he said, I can’t believe I lost my dad.  

He still couldn’t believe it truth be told.

Burt’s voice was still in his head all the time, reciting words of wisdom and directing Kurt daily.  Kurt remembered when he was younger, that he would cry when he realized he couldn’t remember his mother’s voice, and he was worried that when Burt died, he would eventually forget his voice too.  It hadn’t happened though.  Burt Hummel’s voice was as clear in his mind as it was eight years ago - and thank goodness for it. In the morning his mind dragged up memories of his dad telling him to get up, so he did.  His dad’s voice would remind him to eat, so he did.  His dad’s voice told him to be good to others… so he tried to.

“I’m scared… the rest of the group… *bzzzzz* they’re divided on what to do…. *bzzzzz*  We can’t leave him…. *bzzzzz* It hurts him too much to move. *bzzzzz*  Please…. someone answer me….. *bzzzzz*”

Kurt took the walkie in his hand and brought it to his face.  It took a second, and a moment of steadying his breath - he hasn’t even realized he was nervous up until he felt his breath shudder - before he clicked the send button.

“Hi.  I hear you.”

The response was immediate.

“Hello!  Hello!  *bzzzz* Oh my gosh! *bzzzz* HELLO! *bzzzzz*”

Kurt rolled his eyes a little.  He could practically hear the man on the other end jump up with excitement at getting a response finally.

“We have someone with medical training in our group.  Can you tell me where you’re located?”

“Oh god! *bzzzzz*  Yes of course! *bzzzz*  Please hurry! *bzzzzz* He looks so bad… *bzzzzz*”

Kurt wrote down the coordinates the man on the other end gave him on the notepad Mike had left behind.  He tuned out the rapid succession of ‘thank you’s’ he got and let the voice on the other end know that they were getting prepared to leave right away.

Even if they rode the whole way at a full gallop, it would still be almost a half a day before they reached them, and the horses wouldn’t be able to maintain a full gallop the whole way there anyhow, especially since two of them would be pulling a wagon.

“Listen. We’re going to go as fast as we can, but you need to know that we’re far enough away that it could take almost a full day before we get there.”

“But…*bzzzz* he’s so bad….. *bzzzz*  What if he dies? *bzzz*”

Death was inevitable he always told himself.  Especially in this world where they were stripped of what had been normal access to water until ten years ago.  They had adapted, made due with their new lives on this new Earth, but their lives weren’t so much about living as they were about existing now.

But that’s not what the man on the other end needed to be told.  

Thankfully Mike came back at that point, his backpack looking like it had been overpacked with the zipper barely holding it together.  In addition, he had another bag he carried at his side, much larger, and also looking completely full.  Kurt held the radio out to Mike, pleading with his eyes to respond.  “He’s afraid his friend will die before we get there.”

Mike took the radio in hand and spoke.

“Hi there.  I’m Mike.  I’m a medic.  Can you describe what happened?”

“He hit a bump. *bzzzzz* and fell from the quad *bzzzzzz* and it landed on him. *bzzzzzz* His leg looked flattened at first *bzzzzzz* but now it’s all puffy and swollen *bzzzzzz* and he has a fever *bzzzzzzz* and he’s in a lot of pain *bzzzzzz*.”

Kurt went back to the wall, taking his bow and slinging it over his arm and back.  So it was the ATV group.  Twenty people they could expect.  The benefit was that Kurt had seen them before so he knew, if they were lying, how many people to be ready for.  He double-checked the number of arrows he had in the pack on his back and smirked.  Twenty one.  Enough left over for a deer to feed them afterwards if they needed.

Mike talked to Blaine for a few minutes, letting him know what he could do to help his friend - apparently named Trent from what Kurt overheard.  Using that overly calm and soft doctor tone Mike had, he managed to calm Blaine down and reassure him that they would be there as soon as possible.   

The neighing of horses and their accompanying trots alerted Kurt to the wagon being pulled up in front of the building.  Leaving Mike to finish the conversation with Blaine, Kurt left the room and nodded to Mercedes as she hopped down from the seat, handing the reins over to Kurt.

“I usually…. ride a horse.” Kurt stammered as he looked at the reins in his hand to the the single rider horses tied up to the back of the wagon.

“And I usually get to bed at a decent hour sunshine.”  She huffed back, walking past Kurt and into the building.

Kurt looked at the reins once more and then back up to the seats.  Mike would no doubt accompany one of the seats and Kurt assumed that one of the other guards would sit with him.  Kurt didn’t like having to force conversation, especially knowing that this wouldn’t be a short trip and he just knew there was something Mike was itching to say to him.  No.  Kurt was not sharing a seat with anyone for this.

So as soon as Noah and Santana returned with two additional guards, Karofsky and Azimio, Kurt held the reins out the them.  “One of you is riding with the medic.”

They looked between one another and then Karofsky carefully took the reins from a much relieved Kurt, who walked to the back of the wagon and worked on untying the lead from one of the horses at the back.  He had ridden this one before, a black filly that Mercedes had once warned him about.  Apparently she had tantrums when she was tied up, but when Kurt had ridden her, he appreciated how sure-footed she had been and her willingness to gallop ahead with no fear.  He didn’t tie her up when he had taken her out, and she had stayed with him despite the freedom he granted her.  This was exactly the kind of horse he needed if he was going into a trap.  One that would rush into any battle they might find themselves in and trust him to take down any enemies from atop her.

However, Kurt didn’t know the name of this filly - or any of the horses for that matter.  He usually didn’t get the same one too often, so he hadn’t bothered to learn their names.  When he had been fifteen, he had once told his dad the names he was considering for his future vehicle.  He didn’t need anyone to tell him how ironic it was that he was more inclined to name a car than to remember the name of a living, breathing, horse.

Mercedes came out of the building just as Kurt was pulling himself up on the mare and shot him a look that clearly showed her displeasure when she saw Karofsky up on the front seat of the wagon instead of Kurt.  He pretended not to see it though and walked the filly up beside the wagon while Mercedes shook her head and tossed Mike’s bags in the back of the wagon where Azimio had opted to sit.  

Santana and Noah had both claimed single horses for themselves and were mounting them when Mike came out with a portable receiver and walkie talkie.  That too was put into the wagon, though arranged close to the seats so Mike could respond to any calls if necessary.  

“Alright.  Brit packed the cooler full of water and rations for you….”  Mercedes noted and Kurt looked over to note the cooler in the back of the wagon then.  “... everyone has their weapons….” She scanned them over as they nodded, all except Mike who took his oath of ‘Do no harm’ quite seriously. “You have your medical equipment and walkie….”  Taking a step back, she nodded at them.  “Well then, go with God.”

Karofsky tugged the lead to the two horses on the wagon and those on single horses did the same, walking them out of the town quietly.  It was late and they didn’t want to disrupt anyone more than they already had.  In some windows, people waved, Beth and Quinn among them.  Noah blew them a kiss and offered them a warm, reassuring smile.  Santana was blowing kisses to Brittany who stood outside the dining hall, doing the same back to Santana until the air was so full of blown kisses Kurt was holding back a gag.

They passed by Azimio’s pair who told him to take care of himself, and Kitty, who had bonded with Karofsky as a kind of sister.  Kurt didn’t get their relationship entirely - other than that they both had a history of being jerks, and now both seemed to regret that.  Kitty had been one of the ones who had suggested that Kurt should cut his ears off nine years ago.  She had also said that maybe if he tanned he might get into heaven when someone finally killed him.

Her teasing had stopped before Karofsky’s did.  In fact, she stopped being mean when his dad had died.  She had never apologized though, not openly, but Kurt had the feeling she was behind Karofsky apologizing to him.  

Kitty waved to Karofsky and told him she’d beat him at checkers as soon as he returned.  He laughed in response and assured her that he would be the one winning.  Kurt just rolled his eyes.  They weren’t even real brother and sister.  They weren’t paired or anything.  He knew Karofsky didn’t hang around her for sex, and he definitely wasn’t sure what Kitty got out of hanging around with Karofsky.  Really, Kurt didn’t want to know what those two got out of one another’s company.  

When the community was just a dim light behind them, they brought their pace up to a canter and started off the real trip.  Kurt rode out ahead of the group to scout for them.  It also meant he was more alone, and by being alone, he felt safer.   He would ride out ahead until Noah or Santana came to relieve him.

Since they were going without sleep tonight to get at their destination, they would each take turns sleeping in the back of the wagon.  Kurt wasn’t sure how he would sleep in that rickety old thing.  It wasn’t like a pioneer’s wagon, in fact it had been a trailer back before it had been dismantled and repurposed as a wagon, but it still bounced and shook with every little bump on the ground.  

So instead, Kurt chewed on coffee beans.  They were bitter and pieces often got stuck between his teeth, but they helped keep him alert.  He remembered how the smell of fresh brewed coffee was what he would wake up to growing up.  It was a smell he associated with his parents.  Now brewing coffee was considered a waste of water and generator energy, so people had to make do with chewing coffee beans or sucking on coffee grounds to get their caffeine fix.  Most had just foregone coffee altogether rather than taking it in like he did.  It definitely did not taste the same as a bean compared to when it was in a coffee mug.

A few hours, and a lot of coffee beans later, Kurt let Noah take the lead and dropped back alongside the wagon where Mike was on the walkie talkie.

“Okay Blaine, just keep it propped up then.  That should help with the swelling.”

Kurt listened in, though with Karofsky now snoring in the wagon since he and Azimio had swapped places, that was a little difficult.  Christ, how did anyone who lived near Karofsky sleep at night if that’s what he sounded like?

There was a lot less interference now on the frequency since they were moving closer to their destined location, and Blaine’s voice was a lot more clear.

“Okay.  He’s still sleeping.  Is that alright Mike?”

Now that Kurt could actually hear more voice than static, he noted how modulated Blaine’s voice was, if not tight from the apparent stress he was under.  Kurt’s mind wandered and he tried to envision what Blaine would look like when they met up.  Would his voice match his body?  Blaine’s voice suggested someone with gorgeous wavy hair, big beautiful eyes, and a tall, well built body.  He tried to think if any of the small figures he had seen back in the town with the girls matched his mind’s description, but he hadn’t seen anyone too clearly, so there was no one to match any voice to.

“Sleeping is alright for now Blaine, but you do need to try and keep him hydrated so wake him up every now and then to drink.”

Kurt could hear some other voices in the background when Blaine next responded, arguing over wasting their water on someone infirmed.

“I ABSOLUTELY will keep him hydrated Mike.” Blaine responded, clearly speaking over the naysayers who were with him.  Kurt smiled to himself at that.  He had to appreciate someone who didn’t let jerks get their way.

If this was all a ruse and a trap, it was a very well orchestrated one.  Kurt was beginning to believe, more and more, that this was a legitimate call for help given how desperate Blaine was over the walkie and how he was now talking again with Mike about his fallen comrade.  As he caught himself with that thought though, he immediately tensed back up.  If they, those ATV riders, wanted them off guard, calling in regularly for help and sounding desperate was exactly the kind of thing they might do.  It could still be a trap and those riders could just be very adept with psychology and manipulation.

After a couple more hours, they stopped to stretch their legs, let the horses have a much needed break, and all take a half hour to nap.  Kurt didn’t nap around the fire they built, instead wandering off a little ways and sitting up against a broad tree.  He did manage to find sleep, however light, with his hand tight around a dagger hilt.  

Even after all these years, Karofsky and Azimio’s presence made him extra edgy.  He didn’t want to be caught off guard by those two ever again.  Never again would he suffer a hit from them.  Karofsky might have apologized, but that didn’t mean Kurt forgot what he had done and was capable of.  He would never trust them.

Those two had been chief among his tormentors.  They teased him for his voice, being gay, and of course, his damned skin tone and pokey ears.  What had started as simple teasing though progressed.  Out of sight of the adults in the community, they would trip him, shove him into walls, and threaten him.

When Karofsky had stolen a kiss from him after Kurt had tried to confront him though, it just got worse.  It didn’t matter that Kurt’s dad had died, at least not to those two.  Karofsky didn’t want his parents, who he stilled lived with at that time in the community, to find out he was gay and they couldn’t expect a grandchild out of him despite the mess the world was in, so Karofsky just got meaner.  He also started drinking more.  Alcoholic drinks they found were put away for celebrations only, but Karofsky had gotten into the storehouse and had steadily been drinking his evenings away.  It wasn’t until he had beaten Kurt on one particular drunken rampage that anyone had noticed how much alcohol had gone missing.

After that was when Kurt took it upon himself to toughen up.  His physical injuries hadn’t been too bad - mostly bruising and bumps, but the emotional fall out haunted him for months.  He slept with a dagger in each hand when he did sleep.  He had moved away from the community to his self constructed hut home.  Even when Karofsky sobered up, came out to his parents, moved in with Kitty, and tearfully apologized to Kurt, Kurt’s heart rate still stayed fixed at a faster than average pulse.  When Karofsky had convinced the other jerks to stop picking on Kurt, Kurt couldn’t forgive him.   Karofsky didn’t deserve his forgiveness.

Kurt didn’t need anyone to come and wake him.  Even though he managed to doze off, it was a light sleep and he woke himself when he felt he had been out of it for long enough.  The taste of sleep made him hungry for more, but they needed to keep going.  Using water from one of his water bottles, he washed his face to help him wake up and then went to rouse the others.  

Santana, Noah, and Mike got gentle shoulder pats to wake them up, while Kurt just stood away from Azimio and Karofsky and snapped their names to wake them up.  Everyone was groggy.  Mike was the next to lay in the back of the wagon for a nap, seeing as how they needed him to be alert and on top of things when they got to their destination.  Santana took the lead.

Every now and then, Noah would try and engage Kurt in conversation.  Talking about Quinn, Beth, or what Kurt thought about the situation they were riding into.  Between his bleariness and lack of desire to talk, Kurt’s responses were one word until Noah finally got the message and rode up beside the wagon so he could converse with Karofsky and Azimio instead.

Noah was a nice enough guy, at least now, but he wasn’t innocent of wrongdoing against Kurt either.  He had shaped up well enough when he had knocked up Quinn, and Beth came along.  In fact, he was a model father who clearly loved his daughter and would do anything for her.  However, prior to Quinn and Beth, Noah had partaken in Karofsky and Azimio’s rampage against Kurt.  He was another one who hadn’t apologized to Kurt, even though Noah had only verbally harassed Kurt and hadn’t gone father, and despite all the progress he had made, Kurt wasn’t totally comfortable around him either.

Quinn was another matter.  He did trust Quinn, though he would never say so aloud.  He also felt bad for her.  She hadn’t meant to get pregnant with Noah, having been dating someone else at the time it happened.  It caused her to be rejected by her father and the birth was so hard on her system that, without modern medicine, she ended up infertile from the scarring.  Beth would forever be an only child despite both Quinn and Noah wanting more.  Quinn’s dad still didn’t speak to her, despite them all being in the community together.  His rejection of his daughter and granddaughter had caused him to split with Quinn’s mother and then take up residence with a much younger woman.  

As the sun peered over the horizon, the walkie talkie started crackling again with Blaine on the other end, asking if Mike was there.  Mike grumbled and rolled away from the noise, having somehow fallen asleep in the jostling trailer and it was clearly a deep sleep by the way he managed to sleep through the static buzzing beside him.

Karofsky and Azimio cast glances to one another and then over to Noah, silent asking him if they should answer, or wake Mike.  In turn, Noah looked back to Kurt.

Kurt sighed and rode his filly up alongside the wagon, sliding his feet over to one side of the mare and then hopping into the wagon in the small amount of space left there.  He tied the lead he still had in his hand up to the back corner of the wagon and then went over to the walkie talkie, picking it up and hitting send.

“Blaine.  Mike is asleep.  We’re still on the way.”

“Oh…. you again.  I don’t know your name.  Sorry.”

That’s because I didn’t tell you, Kurt thought to himself with a roll of his eyes.

“It’s just that, Trent is awake and in a lot of pain and we don’t have anymore IB profen or anything to give him.”

Kurt looked over at Mike, sleeping so soundly.  If Trent did need a lot of medical help, it was better to have Mike well rested for it.  He sighed to himself and pressed the send button again.

“We’re letting Mike sleep so he can be alert for your friend when we get there.  Are you keeping your friend hydrated?”

“Yes… I mean… I’ve had to give him my water stores and his own.  A few of the others have given up some of theirs too, but others won’t and we’re running low on that too….”

“So he’s staying hydrated?”

“Yes.  Yes.  I’m doing the best I can to get him to drink.”

“Good.  If you’re out of drugs, there are a few things you can look for that might help a bit with pain.”

“Okay, okay… I’m listening.  I’ll try anything to help him.”

“Alright… peppermint, stinging nettles, ginger… do you have any of those?”

“Uh… I think I have some peppermint gum…. would that work?”

Kurt refrained from groaning and smacking his hand to his face in annoyance.  Was the person on the other end a man or a boy?

“No.  It won’t.  That’s just flavoured stuff.  It’s not the same.  What kind of medical supplies are you carrying with you?”

“Just like… bandages and hydrogen peroxide…. we don’t carry that much.”

“And you’ve never thought you might have to deal with something worse than a papercut?” Kurt grumbled back, voice thickly laced with irritation at the thought of a group so ill prepared.  How the hell had they survived the past ten years?

“Well… we have places we visit that have all that stuff… uhm… I mean….”

Kurt sighed, “Never mind.  Look.  He’s just going to have to be in pain until Mike can look at him and that’s that.”

“But…”

“Just be happy he’s still alive and Mike will get to help him.” Kurt snapped.

“Oh…. okay. Thanks… I’ll let you go then.”

The static cleared and Kurt mumbled to himself in irritation at the apparent idiocy of the person on the other end of that line.  You needed to be prepared in this world.  There was no but’s about it.  And his friend would at least get medical help eventually.  It wasn’t like he was going to die while everyone around watched helplessly.  Not like Burt had.

Kurt noticed, but ignored the looks he was getting from Noah as he untied the lead again for his mare and pulled her up alongside the wagon so he could climb back on her and get out of the damned trailer he was in.  He was being harsh.  He didn’t need anyone to tell him that.  Not with those less than subtle looks Noah was giving him or his dad’s voice nagging him in the back of his mind, telling him that the man on the other end of the frequency was no different than Kurt was when he was pleading for someone to help Burt eight years ago.

Shit.  He felt guilty.

He nudged the side of the filly with his ankles and got her into a full gallop, overtaking the wagon and riding up ahead until he met up with Santana, telling her sternly that he was taking the lead.  It was earlier than necessary, but between his stoic, stone face and her own attempts to keep her eyes open, she acquised and fell back, leaving him alone.  

Then he was able to breath a sigh of relief.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he caught the irony.  He didn’t want to be left alone with his thoughts when he was sick but he was more comfortable being alone with himself than with others.  

Really, Kurt just knew he wasn’t comfortable anywhere in this world.  He might have a hard time accepting it, but he knew it was the truth about his situation.  

The trek dragged on after that.  He ignored Noah when Noah had ridden up declaring that it was his turn to take the lead and that Kurt needed his turn at napping and eventually Noah grumbled that Kurt was a “stubborn ass” and fell back to the wagon.  Santana got the same treatment when she had ridden up not long afterwards, but she was far more vocal about his “inability to be reasonable” and the need for him to “get his head out of his ass” before falling back as well.  The sun was hanging right above him when Kurt did drop back to the wagon, where Mike was on the walkie talkie telling Blaine they weren’t far off and kindly suggesting that whomever was in the group with Blaine meet them without any weapons to avoid any misunderstandings.

Thank goodness for Mike.  Kurt’s own tactic would have been far less diplomatic - something to the effect of “if you greet us with weapons in your hands, we’ll cut you from head to toe in a minute”, which probably would have gotten them all into trouble regardless of their intent to bring a medic in to help someone out.  

Everyone was doing their best to bring themselves to a state of alertness as they got nearer to the coordinates they had been given - chewing on coffee beans, or drinking their water.  Noah even gave his face a few good smacks to snap him into full consciousness.  Kurt was ready though.  He had his bow in one hand, the reins in the other.  His eyes were locked ahead, scanning for any signs of movement or threats.  He would not be caught off guard.

In the back of the wagon, Mike was looking over a map and noting that if they took a different route on the way back, they could take old roads and reduce the bumpiness of the ride.  It would take them longer to return, but would be better for the patient.  Old roads were generally avoided by people in the community.  Horses allowed them to get to and from their destinations without worrying about detouring on roads that might have biker gangs on them.  Besides that, the roads had not aged well without maintenance - cracks and potholes more than regularly marring the smoothness, though they were still considerably less rough than going through the wilderness.

Of course, taking a different route back would only be relevant if they weren’t walking into a trap.  

Santana had rode up ahead as Kurt fell back and an hour after she had made her way up there, she whistled back to let them know she had spotted something ahead.  Noah and Kurt brought their horses up to a gallop to meet her while Karofsky slowed the wagon’s horses to a walk.

Kurt plucked an arrow from his pack, just in case, and readied it with his bow in one hand so he could quickly shoot something… or someone, if necessary.

When they reached Santana, they had already advanced quite a bit on what she had seen to alert them to.  Two bodies were waving at them in the distance, one was jumping up and down just in case the waving wasn’t already attracting enough attention.  They didn’t appear to have any weapons on them, at least not ones that were out in the open, and a glance around told Kurt they were the only ones there, probably sent out to meet them since they weren’t quite at the destination coordinates yet.

Regardless, Kurt kept his bow in his hand as they rode up to the pair.  Both were men, around Kurt’s age.  One had straight dark brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail, while the other had a shock of blonde hair that was obviously trimmed by someone who couldn’t cut straight.  The former was thick, not fat, but just broad, while the latter was thin and lanky.  They were both beaming at the group coming towards them, and the blonde one even ran up and yelled towards them.

“You’re here!  You’re really here!  You’ve come to help Trent!  He’s going to be alright!”

Noah, Santana, and Kurt all shared a look which included arched eyebrows and a shared sense of disbelief.  If this was a trap, they were clearly not worried about these two being hurt because they were making themselves easy targets.

Noah slid off his horse, letting Santana and Kurt remain on theirs just in case things went sour.  He nodded to the blonde man-child and introduced himself, letting the pair know that the wagon with the medic would come up as soon as they had ensured this was not a trap.

“It’s not!  It’s really not!” The blonde man-child stammered, silenced then by a hand on his shoulder from his companion who spoke.

“Jeff’s right.  This isn’t a trap.  Our friend really is hurt.  We don’t have any of our weapons on us like Blaine was told.  Please help Trent.  Please.”

Noah gave him a short nod, “Fine.  Take us there and if everything looks good, we’ll signal for our medic to come.”

The pair before them nodded rapidly and ran ahead of them.  Noah led his horse by its lead while Santana and Kurt stayed atop theirs as they ventured forward.  After fifteen minutes of being led by the pair, they found themselves in a shallow plain where ATV’s circled around a group of young men.  All at once, they were looked upon by these men with a blend of curiosity and wariness.  Yet no one was visibly armed and when they saw, at the center of the circle, a makeshift bed with a whimpering man whose leg was elevated on a bundle of clothing, they knew this was not a trap.

Santana lifted her short range walkie talkie and sent a message to the wagon to advance while Kurt slid off his horse and walked with Noah to the felled man.  The crowd of men parted as they walked through to assess the damage prior to Mike arriving.  It was eerily silent except for their footfalls and the cries of the man ahead of them, and as they moved forward, another man, kneeling by the wounded one looked up at Kurt and Noah.

“Oh god.  You’re here.  Thank goodness.”

It was the same voice that had come through over the broadcast, and yet, this man in front of him couldn’t have looked more different than Kurt had imagined him to be.  Big doey hazel eyes, a mop of curly black hair that seemed to bounce on his head with every slight movement, and a small frame.  Whiskers grew over his chin and cheeks, and he worried his bottom lip between his teeth in nervousness as they got closer.  

“Our medic is behind us and will be here soon.” Noah assured the man, Blaine, as he knelt down to look over Trent, who appeared to be completely unaware of their presence as he muttered incoherently.

“He’s… he’s… his fever is bad and he’s talking about things that don’t make any sense.”  Blaine uttered, looking back down to his friend and notably swallowing a lump in his throat.

“He’s hallucinating.” Kurt noted from where he stood.  He had to wonder, in this group of twenty, was there really no one who had any medical knowledge whatsoever that they couldn’t figure that one out on their own?

Blaine’s ears seemed to perk a little when Kurt spoke and he looked up with tears wetting his obnoxiously long lashes.  “You.  You’re the one who picked up.  Thank you.  God… thank you so much.”

 

  



	4. Chapter 3: Choices

 

_**“Water if the driving force of all nature.” -Leonardo da Vinci** _

The curly haired man looked up at Kurt, gratefulness in his tired eyes as he looked to Kurt as if Kurt were more than just a man.

Kurt shifted a little in place, not knowing what to say to the thank you given by the man crouched beside his babbling, feverish friend.  The obvious thing to say would be ‘You’re welcome’, but somehow that didn’t seem to fit the situation.  So he stayed quiet, and glanced around, taking in the scene.  Most of the other men had backed off and were talking in small clusters near their quads, each of which had a different bird painted on it with a corresponding bird name - Canary, Cardinal, Weaver, Mockingbird…. the list went on.  In addition, each had roman numerals following the bird name.  For example, Weaver was followed by IV, meaning it was the 4th Weaver.  These guys clearly liked their ATV’s, and when one had died, they found another to replace it.  How they were able to gas them up was a questionable, but Kurt could see the appeal.  ATV’s could get places motorcycles simply couldn’t.  

The contrast between Kurt, Noah, Santana and the others was notable too.  Kurt and his company were dressed in leather and fur they had tanned and tailored themselves to survive with the harsh winter weather in this area, while the group they had walked into all wore leather jackets clearly taken from old stores - some still glossy with treatment.  Good enough for spring or fall, but not good enough for a northern winter. Their whole outfits looked like a uniform too.  Everyone was wearing T-shirts and jeans.  The only deviation was in the colour of T-shirts they wore.  They all wore boots too, mid-calf in length and black with buckles.  It looked like they had all raided the same store for their clothing and while they might not be on bikes, they screamed of being a gang with their uniformity.

 

Trent, the wounded bird gang member, was whimpering and making nonsense words on the ground near Kurt’s feet while Blaine tried to coax him into drinking some water from a small plastic cup.  The damaged leg was propped up on top of a small stack of folded clothing, more T-shirts by the look of it, and the jeans had been torn off that leg so that Kurt could see for himself just how mutilated the leg was.  It was definitely swollen, but not in a uniform way, peaks and lumps stretching and warping white skin all over.  It was more bruised than not, and clotted gashes ran across what had been his calf.  The other leg had the jeans torn open too, but didn’t look nearly as bad, and it wasn’t swollen, just cut up and bruised.  Even without a thermometer, it was evident that Trent was feverish.  Sweat rolled down his flushed face and his brown hair was matted in wet clumps.  He looked so fragile, so weak, and Kurt felt pity rise within him.

He did look away after a moment.  He couldn’t keep looking at the broken man without being reminded of his own father laying on the ground, and he needed to keep his wits in this foreign group.

After a very awkward ten minutes of waiting, the wagon came around.  Mike hopped off the side of it and rushed ahead to survey the man laying on the ground.  Karofsky and Azimio grabbed his bags and brought them over to him where he muttered a quiet thanks as he began checking over his new patient.

 

“THIS is the doctor you offered?  He’s no older than any of us!” one of the men snapped, walking towards them.  His pale face was rolled into a scowl and sharp green eyes glared down at Mike even though the question was directed at Noah and Kurt.

 

“Fine.  We’ll go if you don’t like it.” Kurt snarled back, knuckles white as he gripped his bow.

 

“Sebastian!  Back off!  He can’t have any less training than any of us do!” The curly haired man interrupted.  Kurt was torn between making an effort to think of him using his name, Blaine, or just not worrying about who was who in this group since the conformity they appeared to prize would make individual names irrelevant.

 

Mike looked back to Kurt, “Now that I’m here, you know I can’t leave.  I made an oath.”

Kurt rolled his eyes at that.  Mike and his stupid oath.  He hadn’t even attended a real medical school but he took the oath the nurse and midwife had given him and hung onto it for dear life.  He had to admit though, he would trust Mike with his own life.  Mike read any and all anatomy, biology, and other texts they could get for him like they were a bible.  He had seen Mike take detailed notes from all of them, and Mike even asked Kurt to bring him live rabbits so he could practice his surgical skills on them.  

However Mike was here because he was the lowest ranking member of the three person medical team in the community.  No matter how much time and effort he had put into his craft, they weren’t going to sacrifice the lives of the midwife or nurse who had both had more lifetime experience than he had.  If this had been a trap, Mike was the most expendable of the three.

With Mike taking care of the man on the ground, and Noah and Santana there to watch him, Kurt walked back to the wagon.  He needed some more coffee beans if he was going to suffer through waiting for the prognosis with the cluster of bird loving ATV riders around him.  Karofsky and Azimio were tending to the horses, which a couple of the bird gang had come up to pet as if they hadn’t seen them before, the blonde boy from before among them.  

While some of the group was friendly, the ones that hung back with the man called Sebastian were leering suspiciously at Kurt and his people.  Kurt kept an eye on those ones.  Clearly they weren’t too thrilled about the help they had been offered, regardless of the fact that Kurt and his people had travelled for the whole night and most of the day to get here, without sleep, and taking only a brief break.  Ungrateful jerks.

Kurt also listened into the conversations Karofsky and Azimio were having with those who had approached them.  They were casual enough, and both of the lugheads were ensuring that they didn’t give too much away about the community.  They didn’t want anyone they couldn’t trust finding out where they were located or what resources they had.  Kurt had to give them credit for that at least.  Most of the conversation was light and based around the usual talk about where they had originally come from before The Tides, if they knew anyone specifically (even ten years later, people still sought out missing relatives), and, in this case, questions about the horses.

In turn, Karofsky and Azimio asked about the quads.  It turned out that the group was nomadic, and quads allowed them to carry more than bikes would.  Beyond that though, they also didn’t get much out of the group and the one called Jeff got a nudge in the side from one of his comrades when he was about to say more - a clear indication that he should shut up.

They didn’t trust Kurt’s people anymore than they trusted any of them.

“Can I get you anything?” Karofsky asked shortly thereafter, leaving the horses with Azimio, along with all the equine fans among the bird gang.  He had come up near Kurt, but as always, left several feet of space between them.

“I’m right here.”  Kurt said, sweeping a hand back to indicate the wagon with all the supplies loaded onto it.  He had been leaning up against the side of the wagon as he munched on beans.  “I can get what I need myself.”

“Right.  Of course.”  Karofsky made a small shrug of his shoulders and lingered for a moment, as if he wanted to say something more, then thought better of it, grabbing himself a bottle of water and walking back to Azimio and the horses.  Honestly, the guy was a moron, Kurt thought to himself.  What could Karofsky possibly get for Kurt that Kurt couldn’t get for himself?

Kurt was left alone for awhile after that, chewing on coffee beans like candy and surveying the group.  Mike was thorough, and had Noah and Santana helping him to brace the leg.  Blaine paced nearby, periodically asking if there was anything he could do to help until Kurt saw Mike say something to him and point back towards the wagon and Kurt.

A minute later, Kurt was face to face with the man, who Kurt realized stood a couple inches shorter than he was.  Kurt could see the redness in and around his eyes, contrasted to the dark bags and circles under his eyes.  He hadn’t slept last night either.

“Mike said I needed to get away from him and let him do his work…” Blaine admitted, fingers digging into the pockets of his jeans as he looked down to the ground.

“And…. you’re over here….. because…..?” Kurt said slowly, trying to coax up a response as to why Blaine would have been sent his way in particular.

“Because Mike said you’d find something for me to do to keep me occupied.” Blaine stammered.

Kurt groaned and rolled his eyes for the upteenth time since they had arrived here.  “Great.  I get babysitting duty.”

“I’m sorry!” Blaine started, the tone in his voice more shrill as he became defensive.  “I just….” he sighed, and his voice softened along with it “... I just can’t lose him.”

“Fuck.  Whatever.” Kurt snorted, walking around to the back of the wagon from where he had been leaning against the side.  He pulled the cooler towards him and opened the lid, pulling out the food rations they had been sent with.  “Help me dish out supper for my people.”

Blaine’s eyes lit up as Kurt pulled out a loaf of bread, a bin of deer jerky, and another bin of blueberries.  Like most nomads Kurt had encountered, Blaine had probably been living off canned goods for years and hadn’t seen fresh food with any amount of regularity.  For this reason, Kurt was eternally grateful the community had established a farm and harvested wild berries every year.  He couldn’t imagine only getting vegetables out of a can with too many preservatives.

Kurt also pulled out plates and directed Blaine to serve each of his people two strips of jerky, a palmful of blueberries, and a slice of bread.  Along with the water bottles they all had, this was their supper.  The blueberries were a personal favourite of Kurt’s, and he always helped harvest them when they were in season so he could sneak the odd berry.  During the winter he lived for the blueberry jam the cooks made, and spring meant that he had to go without blueberries for a few months again, but this time of year was the best, when they had so many blueberries that they were served at all three meals of the day.

Blaine brought food to each of Kurt’s people one at a time, even Mike who just set his to the side while he continued to check over his patient.  When they were all distributed, he came back to the wagon and looked at Kurt expectantly.

“What?”

“I finished the job you gave me…”

“Well I don’t have anything else for you to do for me.  I’m kind of out of my element here and don’t have a chore list.” Kurt huffed, popping the blueberries into his mouth one at a time to enjoy their sweet flavour for as long as he could and pointedly ignoring how Blaine was salivating before him.

“Not true!” Noah piped up as he walked over, having apparently heard Kurt.  “Mike needs us to fashion a bed on the wagon to bring him back on.  Something that won’t cause his leg to move involuntarily.”

Kurt’s gaze rolled towards Noah, both brows arching, “We’re actually taking him back?”

“Well… I thought that was the plan?” Noah asked back, his own eyebrows peaking.

“Wait… Why are you taking him away?” Blaine broke in, looking between them both and then over at Trent worriedly.

“Well he’s alive isn’t he?  Surely Mike can just set his leg and we can get back without taking him.” Kurt argued, ignoring Blaine as he looked at Noah.

“That guy’s leg is crushed Kurt.  Mike needs the x-ray to properly set the leg.” Noah snapped back, also ignoring Blaine.

“So what?  We’re adopting more people?  It’s almost winter Noah.  We can’t prepare for more people.” Kurt shot back, setting his plate down so he could go toe to toe with Noah if necessary.

“That was never the plan Kurt.  You know that.”

“So our plans are now officially made by eight year olds?!” Kurt snapped.  He loved Beth, he truly did, but this was insanity.  They couldn’t run their community on the whim of a kid.  Well meaning as she was, she didn’t understand the risks and dangers of the world outside the community.

Noah pointed a finger at Kurt, “Don’t be like that man.  Don’t.”

“Like what?” Kurt took a step forward, Noah’s finger now set squarely against his chest as Kurt looked up at the bigger man with eyes that screamed for a challenge, “Like I have some semblance of sanity?”

With Noah and Kurt speaking so loudly and angrily at one another, it was only a matter of time before Santana came up and got between them.  She pushed her way in and shoved each of them back so she was between them as she snarled, “Get your panties out of whatever knots they’re in boys.”

Throughout it all, Blaine just watched, slack jawed and eyes wide as if he couldn’t believe the drama unfolding before him.  When Santana intervened though, his jaw managed to close back up and he made his way over to Mike and Trent.  Kurt followed him, set on seeing if Mike was serious about this plan.

“Yes Kurt.” Mike said, before Kurt even opened his mouth to ask.  Kurt didn’t realize he had been that loud when he had been going at it with Noah, but clearly Mike had heard them. “He has fractures in several places AT THE LEAST, torn ligaments, and ripped quadriceps.  There is no way I can just set his leg and leave.  It wouldn’t do a damn thing and it would be morally reprehensible.”

“And what about….” Kurt flipped one of his hands over and swung it to the side in an overly dramatic gesture, “.... all of these other fine people here?”

“We were only ever going to take him back Kurt.  They can continue on their merry way.” Mike replied.

“Well THANK GOODNESS for that.” Sebastian shouted out from where he had been listening in with his small clan of cronies.  “Let’s go boys.”

“Wait just a second here!  We can’t abandon Trent to them!  What if they’re cannibals… or mad scientists or something!” Jeff shot back, looking worriedly at Trent.

That elicited a small chuckle from Kurt, and few things make him chuckle, so those that knew him looked at him in surprise when he did laugh.  “Really?  Cannibals?”

“Well we don’t know you!” Jeff’s brunette buddy said, standing up beside him.

“Who cares?  We thought Trent was going to die.  So what if he ends up eaten or experimented on instead?” Sebastian snapped back to the other half of his group.

“We just can’t abandon him though… he’s been with us since the beginning….” Another man, black haired who looked like he was of asian descent noted.

“We just can’t leave him…” Blaine concurred, “He’s one of our brothers… and what if he wakes up to find out we abandoned him… we can’t…. that would be terrible.”

“So what?” Sebastian walked up then, short brunette hair on a rectangular face that was all too smug for Kurt’s liking.  “We obviously can’t take him with us and we can’t stay here - so let them have him.”

“We only planned on taking one along with us.” Noah interjected towards all members of the bird gang.

“Well mighty fine of you for telling US that since he’s one of our people.  Who the hell are you to make plans for us?!” A dark-skinned man shot out, pointing an angry finger at Noah.

“Even if I can bring down the swelling and set the leg…” Mike spoke up, and everyone listened when he spoke, “... he will need months of healing time and therapy to walk properly again.  He’s better off staying with us for the winter and then we can meet up in the spring and you can have him again.”

“Months….” Blaine mouthed and shook his head, looking at his sweat glazed friend on the ground.

“Right.  Months.  Months of us caring and feeding him when he won’t be able to contribute anything back just out of the kindness of our hearts.” Kurt grumbled.  He wanted to fold his arms over his chest, his go-to position for being irritated, but he needed to keep his bow out just in case this got even more out of hand.

“What if….” Blaine snapped his head up from looking down “... what if I go with him and I’ll take care of food and stuff for myself and Trent?  That way you aren’t all being put out and he won’t be alone?”

“That is ridiculous Blaine!” Sebastian snapped then, stalking up towards the curly haired man, “There’s no need for you to leave us!”

Noah glanced at Mike, who glanced at Kurt, who glanced at Santana, who completed the circle by looking back to Noah.  On one hand, the idea had a lot of potential to save them the effort of taking care of another person who couldn’t give anything back to the community.  On the other hand, it was a risk - not only if Blaine couldn’t manage to feed himself and Trent, but because it meant they would be bringing back someone who could turn on them.

“Don’t be an ass Sebastian!” Blaine snapped right back, perching himself up on his toes to gain some height as he went face to face with Sebastian.  “You were ready to leave Trent to die here after we’ve all been together for years - just like that.”

Sebastian’s voice dropped as he took a glance around and then looked back to Blaine, “Look.. you know I wouldn’t do the same if it were you….”

“I really don’t care Seb!” Blaine yelled back and turned away from the other man.  Kurt’s mouth turned up at one corner.  He had to appreciate the fire in Blaine and his unwillingness to bow to the other man.  It would have been easier for him, certainly, to just go off with his gang and leave Trent behind.  He wouldn’t have to face anything unknown, or be with strangers when it was evident these men had been together for some time and some of them had forged brotherly bonds - Sebastian’s words notwithstanding.

“Come on Blaine!” Sebastian called after him, but it appeared to be of no use as Blaine looked straight at Mike.

“I’ll do what I said I would.  Can I come?”

Mike blinked a few times, surprised apparently that Blaine would think that kind of decision would be left to him.  The lanky asian medic looked over at the group of guards that Kurt was standing by and his eyes pleaded with them to take over.

Blaine’s eyes followed Mike’s, and the error in his calculation was revealed.  Mike wasn’t in charge of this group.  Turning then to Kurt, Noah, and Santana, he asked again.

“Well?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“We need to -”

All three of them had responded at once, and definitely not with any uniformity.  They all both snapped their mouths shut and looked to one another with irritation.  None of them were on the same page here.  

Mike gave Blaine an apologetic look and excused himself, walking over to the threesome.  “Let’s talk this over.”

They walked together back to the wagon and Kurt immediately dropped his voice to a whisper.

“We can not entertain the idea of bringing back someone who has the clarity to pay attention right now and could lead them all back to the community.”

“But you heard him!” Noah hissed quietly, “He would save us the trouble of providing for that kid on the ground!”

“Assuming of course he knows how to get his own food.” Kurt snapped back.

“What if he’s only ever been with this group and doesn’t know how to take care of himself?” Santana queried thoughtfully.

“Exactly.” Kurt noted with a nod.  “He could be more trouble than help.”

“Guys, as far as the guy on the ground is concerned, it would be better for his recovery and mental health if he thought he wasn’t abandoned when he comes out of it….” Mike interjected.

“Who the hell cares about some stranger’s mental health if we end up paying the price for it?” Kurt grunted, earning him a nod of agreement from Santana.

“I do damnit Kurt.” Mike shot back at him.  “That’s my priority.  My oath -”

“Your oath.  Your damn oath.  Always with the oath.” Santana groaned.  “What about the safety of everyone else in the community?”

“What if we bind his eyes for the way back?” Noah suggested, fingers rubbing over his chin as he considered it.

“And what if he’s really good at blind tracking?  It wouldn’t matter anyhow.” Kurt retorted, looking between Noah and Santana at the curly haired man who was presently engaged in his own verbal spat with Sebastian across the plain they were in.

“I’d suggest a vote, but clearly we’re two for two.” Mike sighed and looked over at Karofsky and Azimio who were dutifully standing to the side and just watching everything quietly.  They were good for fighting, but not good for intellectual matters.  “Even if we got those two in on this, luck would have us going three for three instead.”

“So how do we resolve this?” Noah mused, his fingers now moving to the back of his head to scratch a spot there.

They all mutually exhaled sighs.  They needed to make a decision and it was clear they wouldn’t be able to do it without some kind of divine intervention right now.

Which is what they got.

“Dad? *bzzzz* Dad are you there? *bzzzzzz*” The radio crackled from within the wagon beside them.  Noah hastily reached inside and grabbed the receiver.

“Hey Bethie boo.  It’s dad.”

“Did you save  *bzzz* the guys yet? *bzzzz*”

“Yah honey.  Mike’s doing a real good job here.  We just have to figure out what to do about his friend so dad’s going to let you go while we figure it out.”

“Wait dad! *bzzzz* What friend? *bzzzz*”

Noah kept the receiver in hand instead of docking it back on the radio. “He has a friend that wants to come with him to our home, but we don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

“Well his friend should come. *bzzzzzz* Everyone needs family and friends to love them. *bzzzz*”

Kurt wished it were possible to roll his eyes right to the back of his head because the amount his ocular muscles limited to right now seemed inadequate for the ridiculousness of the sentiment of the eight year old girl.

“Well fuck.” Santana said with a tossing up of her hands, “Fine.  Let’s take the friend.  Screw it.”

Kurt’s eyes stopped their rolling and fixed on Santana with incredulous disbelief, “Are you joking me?”  The eight year old couldn’t have worked her magic just like that, not this far away, not over something so potentially threatening.  

*Ms. Lopez *bzzz* You shouldn’t use curse words. *bzzzz*  Mr. Hummel *bzzzz*   Please be nice.  *bzzzz* You told me your dad was nice. *bzzzz* So you should be too.”

What Beth couldn’t see when she said that was the knowing smirks of everyone around Kurt in that moment.  Knowing in the sense that bringing Kurt’s father into the argument was the penultimate argument, and Beth had done so unwittingly.  With his jaw dropped in disbelief, everyone held in their chuckles, but Kurt did see their smirks.  He was beat.

“Fine!” Kurt said, tossing his hands up into the air as he accepted his defeat in the matter.  “But don’t come crying to me to save you when he kills you all in your sleep!”

“You hear that Bethie boo?  We’re bringing the hurt man and his friend back.  We should be there….” Noah began.  Kurt didn’t hear the rest because he had stormed off with an axe from the wagon to go find a tree to cut up to help brace Trent inside of the trailer.  He made a point of walking as far off as he could without going so far that he’d regret having to carry the wood back on his own.  

It didn’t take long to find a tree that would do, and as soon as Kurt shed his coat on the ground, he angrily began swinging away at the tree trunk.  Each hit was aimed at someone.

The Others… for everything.  
His mom… for leaving him too early.  
His dad… for the same.  
Karofsky… for the beating.  
Azimio, Kitty, and Noah… for the verbal abuse.  
Santana, Brittany, Quinn, Rachel, Finn… for finding contentment in this hell.  
Himself… also… for everything.

The tree fell and Kurt worked then on chopping it into long, thin, pieces he could drag back to the wagon.  By the time he was ready to do that, it didn’t matter how cool it had gotten as the evening settled upon the land - he was covered in his own sweat.  His coat was draped over one of the planks he had cut and he dragged it back then, ignoring when everyone looked at him with curious eyes as he returned sweat soaked in what was otherwise a chilly evening.  Some people in the community would say that he had wasted water by sweating so much.  He would say that nothing else was as therapeutic.  

He dropped the planks off with Karofsky and Azimio, handing the latter the axe as well and directing them to cut the planks to fit the width and length of the wagon so however Trent was packed in, he wouldn’t be able to roll around.  Then Kurt went to quench his thirst with a bottle of water.

Noah and Santana were busy now following Mike’s instructions on how to lift Trent and get him settled in the wagon with the least amount of damage.  Now that Mike had tended to him, and no doubt given him some kind of strong anti inflammatory, Trent’s leg looked a little more deflated, though no less worse for wear.  Several members of the bird gang were covering up two of the ATV’s with tarps that were being nailed into the ground.  One of the ATV’s was banged up on the side. Kurt noted to himself that was probably the one that fell on top of Trent and made a mental note of the name on it - Chickadee.

The other ATV being covered up had the name Canary, and must have been Blaine’s.  Both ATV’s had their cargo bins pulled off of them and as Kurt looked back into the wagon, he noticed the bins sitting in it, along with two backpacks that they hadn’t brought out here so must also have belonged to the pair they were adopting.

“Noah said that he could come… but had to leave the quad behind because of the noise.” Karofsky said as the bigger man came up by Kurt and handed him the reins of the black mare.

Kurt took the offering and nodded to Karofsky.  “Makes sense… would scare off the wildlife with all that noise it makes.”

Kurt shouldn’t have responded to Karofsky, because he then had Karofsky hanging beside him after that, apparently thinking that because Kurt responded to him, it must be alright to be near him.  Kurt quickly put an end to that line of thinking by glaring sidelong at Karofsky until he noticed, got the hint, and backed off to help Azimio once again.  Karofsky could apologize to Kurt until he was blue in the face, it didn’t make Kurt feel any more comfortable with him around.

Blaine was talking to a group of his bird gang members, giving them hugs each in turn as he said his goodbyes.  Off to the side was a very grouchy looking Sebastian, arms folded over and just glaring at the ground like he was trying to bore a hole into it with his eyes.  Blaine didn’t stop to say goodbye to Sebastian, and Sebastian didn’t try to stop him this time when he walked to the wagon where Trent was being carefully loaded into.  Either Blaine had said his goodbyes to Sebastian while Kurt was gone, or things were just as frosty as they looked between them.

Kurt climbed up on the black mare then, just as the bird gang was climbing onto each of their respective ATV’s and calling back to Blaine one last time to wish him well and tell him they’d miss him and see him in the spring.  Then, in what had to be one of the noisiest departures Kurt had ever experienced, they left going south, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake which Kurt and his people coughed on until it dispersed.

Definitely a good idea to leave the ATV’s behind.

“Taking lead.” Kurt said then and cantered his mare ahead of the wagon which was still being prepared to leave.  No one responded to him and the most reply he got was a nod from Blaine, sitting beside Trent in the wagon - as if it mattered to Kurt if it was alright with him that he take the lead.

They travelled for a few hours, until Santana rode up to Kurt and told him they’d decided to sleep for the night before continuing since none of them had had more than a couple hours sleep in over a day now.  Kurt nodded to her and rode alongside her back to where the wagon was stopped in a small clearing a few meters away from some old highway.  A fire was already started and Noah was already sawing logs beside it, curled up in a sleeping bag.

“I can take watch…” Kurt murmured as he climbed down off his horse and let Azimio take the reins so he could get the mare fed and watered before went to nap too.

“Fuck Hummel.  Like you’d let any of us do it.” Santana grunted as she pulled another sleeping bag out of the wagon and went to go join Noah by the fire.

Mike was inspecting his patient and Blaine was on the other side of Trent, across from Mike. They were talking quietly and once Mike crawled out of the wagon, Blaine laid himself down by his friend and was quickly lost to sleep as well.

In fact, within minutes of coming back, everyone was sleeping except for Kurt.  Even the horses were out - overworked and exhausted from the day.  Kurt’s head kept bobbing as he fought off his own sleep and he cursed himself for chewing up all the coffee beans they brought.  He really could have used the boost right now.

Instead, he thought about all the mean names and insults he had endured in his lifetime and soon his heart rate was up and he was too angry to fall asleep.  In his mind he came up with great comebacks and retorts - ones that he’d wished he had the wit to come up with back when he was being bullied and picked on.  

His accelerated heart rate came at a price though.  Every snore, every incoherent murmuring, every turn of a body made Kurt jump in place.  He was so overtired and his mind was so overactive that he couldn’t help but startle at the slightest sound.

He was grateful when Noah woke up at the peaking of the moon and took over for him.  It wasn’t often that Kurt took someone else up on the offer to watch over him as he slept, but he also usually didn’t go without sleep for so long.

And he only needed a couple hours before he was awake again and feeling refreshed enough to take over for Noah once more.  This time though, he felt refreshed and his brain didn’t feel like it was swelling up inside of his head.

At dawn they had a small breakfast, made smaller still by the fact they had picked up not one, but two additional people, and rode off again.  The trip was quiet, save for Blaine asking Mike about how Trent was doing every single hour and Mike, very patiently, telling Blaine that Trent was stable and he’d be able to say more when they got back to the community.

“How do you have all this medical stuff?  Whenever we dig through a pharmacy all the good stuff is long gone…” Blaine asked of Mike at one point while they had stopped to take a bathroom break and were waiting for Karofsky to returned from the bushes.

“Few years back the scavengers in our group found a hospital that had all the supplies locked up still.  We all went back there with wagons, broke the locks, and took everything we could.” Mike explained as he stretched his legs out now that he had a chance to.  

“But doesn’t a lot of the drugs go bad or expire after so long…?” Blaine said after taking in the information.

Mike smirked a little, “The expiry date on medicine just tells you when the drug is most potent for and after that it begins to lose it’s potency… so the drugs that were made before The Tides are still effective, at least most of them are, but you just need more to get the same effect you would have before they expired.”

Blaine nodded slowly as he took it all in, and then MIke added something more that made them all grin a little.

“And for those drugs that have lost their effectiveness, well let’s just say I’ve now seen firsthand the placebo effect at work.”

Taking the old roads did mean the ride was smoother, but it also meant they didn’t return to the community until well after dusk that night.  Regardless of that, loved ones were waiting for them after Noah had called in an hour before their arrival to let them know their return time.  Blaine’s jaw dropped a little as he saw just what he was entering into - a full town, with more humans in one place than he’d probably ever seen together before.  

Kurt watched his reaction with curiosity.

First Blaine just scanned everything, just trying to take it all in and then looked to Mike, asking if this place was real, affording him a chuckle and a nod in return.  Then Blaine became quiet and watched Noah as he was reunited with Quinn and Beth, giving both big hugs and kisses.  Azimio and Santana also both went to great their girlfriends before coming back to the wagon to help unload the supplies, even though Mercedes had her people on it.  Everyone helped unload Trent from the wagon and carry him into the makeshift doctor’s office where Carole, the nurse, had set up a bed for him.

Blaine tried to follow Trent in, but Mike held a hand up to him at the entrance.

“Myself and the two other medics need to do our work now to help him out, and I know you mean well, but you have to stay out of our way.”

Blaine took in a sharp breath, looked to the side of Mike at Trent, and then nodded back up to Mike.  He turned in place and looked around, now seeing for the first time the curious looks being directed at him from the people of the community.

“Who’s the cute little elf boy?” Brittany asked, cutting the silence and asking the question on everyone’s minds.

“This is Blaine.  He’s a friend of the guy in the clinic, Trent.  We’re taking them in for the winter while Trent heals.” Noah explained to everyone gathered.  There were some immediate grumblings from the group about how a vote should have been conducted prior to accepting someone new, but those were quashed by arguments about how this was not a typical situation with the damaged boy who had been brought back as well.

Blaine made a little wave and gave a nervous smile to everyone as he looked around.  His hand dropped back to his side quickly when no one immediately responded to his attempt at being friendly, but a certain eight year old girl did step away from her parents and walk towards Blaine, offering him a hand as she looked up at him.  He glanced side to side, seeing if this was some kind of test or joke before accepting the offered hand and shaking it.

“I’m Beth.”

“Nice to meet you Beth.  I’m Blaine.”

She grinned at him and then turned to skip happily back to her parents, leaving him alone again.

“We’ll put him in one of the apartments by the stables.” Mercedes said simply and wagged a finger at Tina, telling her to go ready the room.  Blaine gave both women a thankful nod and then went to the wagon, seemingly trying his best to cope with all the eyes on him, and collect the cargo bins that had been strapped onto his and Trent’s ATV’s along with their backpacks.

“What’s all that?” One of the other kids from the community asked, peeking out from behind his parent’s legs.

“Oh… this is my stuff and my friend Trent’s stuff.” Blaine explained as he looked at the child curiously and then offered the small human a weak smile.

“Did anyone check his stuff?” A voice in the crowd asked of them.

Santana and Kurt exchanged looks, and simultaneously turned to look at Noah.  Between their sleepiness and rushing, they hadn’t thought to check his gear.  For all they knew, there could be something that could have tracked them back here or some kind of poison, or even a cache of weapons.

“Hey… wait….” Blaine stammered as both Kurt and Noah came up beside him and started unlatching and unzipping his things to look inside.  

But Blaine didn’t argue after that, and Kurt saw from the corner of his eyes that the man’s hands dropped to his sides as he sighed in frustration, standing back and just watching them root through his things.

Clothing, none of which was really good for the weather he’d be enduring here, cans of food like Kurt had expected, bandaids, books, bullets without a gun, a bag of what looked like old phones (a waste of space in Kurt’s mind), journals, maps, a few old pictures that were weathered beyond being able to see the features of the subjects clearly, and then…

“What the fuck!” Noah yelled and jumped back from where he had been digging through one of the bins.

Kurt scooted over and peered inside the bin as Noah knelt back down and pointed at the thing in question.

It took a second for Kurt to figure out exactly what he was looking at, but when he did, his stomach turned and he cupped a hand to his mouth in disgust.  There, threaded on a string, was a series of ears that were obviously cut off from Others - a rainbow of different skin tones, all thin and formed into points about two inches higher than where a human ear would stop and curve.

Blaine had a necklace of dismembered ears from the worst enemies humanity had ever faced.

  
  
  



	5. Chapter 4: Peaces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early chapter release as a thank you to those following and reviewing! I got to 100 followers on tumblr without having to beg or advertise for people to follow me and so I'm going to give back to you all with this!

_**“You don't extinguish fire by adding more fire, you need water.” - Pope Shenouda III** _

 

Kurt counted in his mind as he looked over the discovery in the cargo bin.  Fourteen.  There were fourteen ears of different colours and sizes that had been sewn together on a chain.  All fourteen from The Others with their outrageously pointed tips, which meant that the small man who up until this point had looked as threatening as a puppy had potentially killed fourteen of The Others.

Pulling an arrow from the pack on his bag, Kurt gingerly hooked the chain on the tip of the arrow and lifted it out of the cargo box for everyone to see - not wanting to actually touch the thing with his bare hands.  A hush fell over the crowd gathered, and then responses varied from gagging to hushed ‘Ohmygods’ and a lot of looking between Blaine and the ear necklace.

“It’s not… unheard of.” One voiced piped up among the others, and Kurt looked up, seeing it came from a middle aged woman who had joined the community a couple years ago with her family after being on the road since The Tides.

Blaine nodded in agreement and knelt down to pop the lid of the second cargo box, immediately digging into the back left of the box and pulling out another chain of ears and holding it up without any noticeable concern about how gross the thing was.  “It’s how you can trade with certain groups.”

More quiet and then Kurt dropped the ears back into the cargo bin and put the arrow back into his pack as he stood back up.  “Uck… fine…”

“Fine?” an incredulous voice asked of him and Kurt saw it came from the same man who had asked about searching Blaine’s things earlier.  “He has dismembered body parts and it’s fine?”

“They can’t hurt us, and they’re not human.  I didn’t see any bombs or weapons or anything else concerning aside from the fact that he needs better clothing to survive the winter here.” Kurt stated simply, eying the man up and down.

Blaine seemed less concerned with the fact that people were watching him warily with the discovery of the ears, and more concerned with Kurt’s last point.  “What’s wrong with my clothing?”

 

Kurt didn’t get a chance to respond to that question because Beth spoke up again from where she stood between her parents.  “Why do you have a necklace made of ears?” she asked of Blaine.

Blaine sighed and tossed the ear chain he was holding back into the cargo bin before looking first at Beth and then at the group awaiting a response before him.  Kurt could see it in his eyes - Blaine was uncomfortable, and worried for himself.

“It’s… we need them to trade for resources with certain groups.”  He offered, hands spread to either side with his palms up as he responded to everyone even though it had been Beth asking the question.

“It’s true.”  The woman from earlier spoke up, eyes turning onto her.  “I never had them but we were told by a few groups we couldn’t trade with them unless we proved our humanity with one of those things.”

“Prove your humanity?” Quinn queried then, looking between Blaine and the woman.

Blaine just shrugged but the woman seemed to have an answer and spoke, “Renegades will only trade with you if you’ve killed Others.”

More silence, and then slowly eyes went back onto Blaine, Kurt’s included.  Had this small man actually managed to kill Others?  With what would he have even done that?  The contents of his baggage would suggest the only way he could have killed them would be throwing old cell phones at them or reading them to boredom.  How was it even possible?  Everyone here knew that if The Others came, you ran, you didn’t fight.  You wouldn’t stand a chance if you fought.

At least, that’s what Kurt had been led to believe.  They’d never met anyone who’d survived an encounter with a close encounter with an Other.  The closest they had was a senile old man who swore he looked one in the eye.  That was the same man who Mike had to heavily sedate several times a week because he had freak outs, or as Mike called them ‘Anxiety Episodes’.  Mike did have the tendency to make everything sound clinical.

No one asked Blaine if he had actually killed Others though, so after a moment Tina spoke up and told Blaine that she could show him the apartment Mercedes had delegated her to ready for him.  He looked grateful for the exit excuse, and grabbed one of the cargo bins as he followed her.

That’s when people started talking.

“How many were on there?”  
“Do you think he actually killed them?”  
“I’ll bet they’re faked.”  
“How do you even kill one of them?”  
“Someone should ask him.”  
“What if he’s dangerous?”  
“Maybe he’d make a good guard.”  
“Why do you need ears to prove you’re human?”  
“Do you think he’d trade them for stuff?”  
“I really don’t want him sleeping that close to us.”  
  
Kurt started tuning out the voices around him as they all gossiped freely.  A lot of questions were directed to the one woman who had vouched for Blaine by admitting ear necklaces were a legitimate thing, and she became increasingly agitated as it became clear that her knowledge about the object in question was limited to the fact that she hadn’t been able to trade with some groups because she didn’t have one of those things.

The voices all stopped though when Blaine returned to get more of his gear, glancing around nervously as everyone watched him and were clearly holding off on talking again until he was out of earshot.

By that point the family groups had left and it was only childless individuals around.  Bit by bit though, that group dispersed too as the need for sleep overcame the need to gossip about the community’s latest additions, leaving Kurt alone outside of the clinic where Mike, Carole, and the midwife were still working on Trent.

Kurt was leaning against the building, when Blaine returned, and since all his gear was gone, Kurt assumed it was to check up on Trent.

“No word yet.” He said towards Blaine on his approach.

Blaine nodded and looked to the door of the clinic, moving a hand up to the back of his neck and rubbing it there as he waited for a moment as if someone would come out of the door in that instant and tell him how Trent was doing.

Instead Blaine ended up leaning against the wall too, a good meter away from Kurt, and making eye contact with the ground.  He had to be tired, Kurt thought as he looked over at the man whose dark circled eyes and slumped demeanor suggested little else.   And while Blaine stared at the ground, Kurt couldn’t help but keep his eyes on him.  He had been so eager, so happy, when Kurt and his people had arrived to help Trent, and had almost seemed boyish.  Now he looked more akin to Kurt’s age, if not older, worn by the trip and the inquisition he had just experienced at the hands of the community, and worried about his friend in the building behind them.

He was smaller than Kurt, but broader too, and did not seem to lack for muscle tone if the outlines under his T-shirt suggested anything.  His curls were haphazard and there was a faint echo of Kurt’s younger self that demanded that those curls be trimmed down from where they hung around his chin where he had about a week’s worth of facial scruff poking through his face.  Beards were commonplace these days in men, and Kurt was one of the few men who kept himself shaved down since he couldn’t seem to ever grow a proper beard anyhow.

Maybe, in another time and place, Kurt would have found him beautiful, but too many crushes on straight men over the years and his need to remain aloof meant that now Kurt was largely disinterested in such things.  Blaine was likely just as straight as everyone else was around here, and Kurt wasn’t a teenager with time for silly little crushes anymore.  

Still, Blaine was reminiscent of Kurt’s fantasy men and with that in his mind, Kurt zoned out a bit until the sound of a throat clearing brought him back to the present and he saw that Blaine was now looking at him instead of the ground.

“Trying to figure out if I’m dangerous?”

Kurt let the corner of his mouth twitch up into a smirk as he heard the question.  Really, it should have been exactly what he had been looking over Blaine for given what had just occurred.  He should have been sizing him up and trying to figure out how someone so small could have killed one of those tall, pointy-eared demons.  But instead, Kurt had been recalling a fantasy image he had once had of having coffee in a little coffee shop with a fantasy boyfriend who looked a lot like Blaine.

“Are you?”

Blaine sighed and looked away from Kurt, his eyes falling back onto the ground.  He was quiet and Kurt presumed he didn’t want to talk about it until a moment later Blaine spoke up while looking away still.  

“I’m not.”

“Good.” was Kurt’s simple response and they went back to coexisting in silence.  Kurt didn’t know how he had gotten stuck with babysitting this new guy.  Everyone had left and seemed to have forgotten that Blaine was there even though they had just all been talking feverishly about him.  Kurt couldn’t just leave Blaine alone, especially in the night, and especially when they still didn’t know much about him.  

Night patrol guards strolled past every so often and nodded to Kurt, who nodded in return out of politeness.  Kurt could have just left Blaine under their watch he supposed, but the worst case scenario was that if Blaine could kill an Other, than he could easily take care of a patrolling guard if he so desired.  Better to have numbers on their side just in case.

For another hour, they lived in their silence.  Periodically Kurt would fall back into his daydreams and had to give himself a mental slap and remind himself he needed to be on his game if curly over there tried anything.  But Blaine was nothing if not well behaved, and when Mike came out of the front doors of the clinic, Blaine immediately perked up and looked at Mike with an intensity that told Kurt that even if Blaine was dangerous, he was clearly here for his friend first.

“So we opened up the leg, followed the textbooks, and pinned it up, cleaned out the infection, set the leg, stitched him up, and put on a leg brace until it looks good enough to put a cast on.” Mike immediately said as he saw the look in Blaine’s eyes.

Of course though, Blaine had to stick onto one part of that whole play-by-play.  

“Followed… the textbooks?  You haven’t done this before?”

Mike looked past Blaine for a moment towards Kurt, who gave him a shrug, before looking back to Blaine and nodding.  “We don’t have vehicles here anymore that could crush our legs.  We’re trying to help the best we can.”

Blaine ran his fingers up through the hair on both sides of his head, curls stretching out and then bouncing back in place as he made a low whine.  “Oh my god… we’re trusting in a textbook….”

“Our nurse, Carole, has seen it done before, and she felt confident we did everything as perfectly as it could be done.” Mike offered.  

Kurt could have let Mike try and calm down Blaine, who seemed to be rapidly unwinding before their eyes, but it was clear if there was one thing Mike needed to improve on, it was bedside manner.  Kurt stepped up and set a hand tentatively on Blaine’s shoulder.

“I would rather have Mike work on me than any old world doctor.  He knows his stuff.”

Between the hand on his shoulder, which Blaine looked at curiously for a moment before looking up at Kurt, and Kurt’s words, Blaine seemed to relax a little.  He certainly stopped fidgeting with his hair, which relieved Kurt’s inner fourteen year old to no end who definitely wanted to style that hair.

“Thank you Kurt….” Mike said slowly, as if he couldn’t believe Kurt had said it.  Had it been so long since Kurt had paid anyone around here a sincere compliment?

Blaine had honey eyes then, Kurt realized as if it were an epiphany.  They were looking at him and somehow Kurt had managed to miss them up until now.  It wasn’t just that they were brown, or hazel, or somewhere inbetween.  No, they looked like honey complete with the glossiness.  

And then those eyes were off of Kurt and looking towards Mike.  “Can I see him?”

Mike nodded once and called for Carole, who came out wiping off her hands with a rag.  He introduced Blaine and Carole and then asked Carole to take Blaine to Trent, explaining to Blaine that Trent was still sedated and probably wouldn’t be awake for awhile yet.

That left Mike and Kurt alone outside.

“So his real prognosis?” Kurt asked once Blaine and Carole had left.

Mike sighed and glanced over at Kurt with his more mundane brown eyes.  “We don’t know.  We did everything right as far as the books and Carole are concerned, but each injury is unique and no textbook can cover all the possibilities.  He seems to be stable though… but… I really don’t know if he’ll be able to walk properly ever again.”

Kurt snorted derisively, “Well his leg got crushed.  We both saw it.  He’s lucky to be alive.”

“We might need to take him in though longer than just the winter Kurt…”

“Oh.”

So Mike had considered how his bird gang might not be able to take care of someone with a gimped up leg, or that Trent may not even be able to use a quad again - not that Kurt would blame him if he never wanted to get on one again after that.  In addition, physical rehabilitation would probably take longer than just the winter months.  

Without realizing it, they had just decided for the community to take on a new member, and a high needs one at that.

“Anyhow… you should probably get to bed.  We’ve both been up far too long.” Mike said.

Kurt shook his head, needing to ensure Mike knew before he left.  “Mike…. You all were inside working on that kid, but when we went through their stuff -”

“- You searched their things?”

Kurt nodded to Mike, who looked largely unimpressed by what he must have thought was some kind of invasion of privacy.  Regardless of Mike’s ethical issues on the matter, Kurt continued.

“Anyhow, they have these… chains… strung with ears… from Others….”

Kurt watched as Mike’s face went pale and he saw him processing that information through his eyes and what it meant, or at least implied, about their guests.

“So you can imagine I’m not really alright with leaving you guys alone with him if he has the potential ability to harm you in some way.” Kurt added after a moment.

“Holy hell….” Mike said with a shake of his head in disbelief.  “I mean, there’s one side of me that’s immediately curious about the ears and potentially dissecting them and gaining some insight about The Others….”

Kurt couldn’t help but smirk at that admission.  Mike was nothing if not predictable.

“... but neither of them really strike me as the type who could go and kill Others… I mean… Trent.  Trent is not at a healthy weight or build and he’s lucky he’s young because otherwise he’d have nothing going for him in the healing process.  I really have a hard time seeing him as a killer… and Blaine just seems far too nice…”

Kurt snickered, “Well maybe being a soft sweetie pie is how one kills an Other.”

“Doubtful.”

They chuckled briefly and then stood outside for awhile, Kurt just waiting.  He expected Mike to say something to him, given how Mike always shot him those looks like he wanted to say something to Kurt, but nothing was said, instead, Blaine was led out by Carole after a few minutes suggesting that he get his rest and come back in the morning to visit Trent again.

Blaine seemed much more at ease now that he had seen his friend, and nodded obediently to Carole.  “Yes.  Absolutely.”

“Mike, you too.  I can stay up with him tonight.  You look like you’ll pass out at any moment.” Carole ordered, shooing them off with a wave of her hands before returning to the inside of the makeshift clinic.

“Well the boss has spoken.  I’ll see you in the morning I imagine Blaine.” Mike said with a nod before departing back to his own suite just a couple doors down from the clinic.

Once again, that left Blaine and Kurt in silence together.  Blaine looked over at Kurt and smiled weakly, “Thank you again… for picking up.”

Kurt let out a sigh and rolled his eyes up, earning him a curious arch of Blaine’s oversized eyebrows.  “One of us would have after we had decided to respond.  It could have been Mike or Noah or Santana just as easily.”

Well, probably not Santana Kurt thought to himself.  She’d be the one most likely to sever the connection somehow to avoid having to leave Brittany for any length of time.

“Still… it was you… and your voice gave me hope.  So thank you.” Blaine reiterated before turning and leaving Kurt there, wondering if he should follow after Blaine just to ensure he was actually going to his designated apartment and not going to steal supplies.  However, a guard strolled by then, and in the same direction that Blaine was going, so Kurt opted to head back to his home and let sleep take him.  If the community was on fire when he returned, well, he had done more than his part in this matter.

He didn’t even start a fire in his pit when he got back to his shack.  Kurt just fell onto his bed and was out.  Here was the only place he felt he could sleep safely.  No one ever came to bother him here and he had enough snares and traps set up around that no dangerous animals could get by.  Not that anything dangerous was often seen.

When he did awake, the sun was already at its peak and Kurt had barely moved an inch in sleep.  He discovered he was sore when he got up, no doubt the result of being on a horse for a day and a bit, and chopping down that tree so ferociously.  It didn’t matter though, the best cure for sore muscles was moving them again so they didn’t stiffen up more.  He washed his face with the last bit of water in one of his water bottles, collected all the empties, and made his way back to the community after relieving himself behind a tree near his home.

It was harvest time so all the workers were out taking care of the crops they had.  They grew a lot of wheat, oats, barley, rye, and other grains which seemed to grow well in the soil here.  In addition they had a good crop of potatoes, carrots, onions, zucchini, lettuce, beans, tomatoes, peas, peppers, and cucumbers.  Mercedes had even managed to have some of her people set up a raspberry garden.  Fruits were the hardest to come by this far north, so the raspberries, cranberries, and blueberries were especially special to everyone.  Rhubarb also grew easily in the climate, but was so tart that it usually had to be mixed with something sweet to temper the flavour.  Kurt would kill these days for a real peach or orange.

Most of the food would be preserved in some manner, to last them through until the next harvest in the next year, but they always had a bit of a feast once all the food was in - a sort of Thanksgiving time celebration.  

So far, they hadn’t had to worry about drought up here.  There had been enough rain since they started planting crops to ensure the plants grew.  No one ever spoke though about the possibility of a dry year because they knew it would be the end of them and this community.  

Since the workers were out, guards were helping with water distribution.  Kurt turned in his empty bottles and collected his ration for the day, putting them into the backpack he had on in place of his arrow pack.  Then he was off to the clinic.

On a typical day, Kurt would have gone out to see if his snares and traps had caught anything, but the overwhelming curiosity hit him as soon as he woke up - he wanted to see how their guests were doing and if anything new had occurred since last night.

Laughter is what he heard first when he walked in, certainly not the sound he was expecting.  He walked towards it, into the room that must have been set up for Trent’s recovery.  The man he had only seen whimpering and laying down up until now was sitting up a bit in the bed and talking animatedly with Blaine who was sitting on a space on the edge of the bed and laughing at whatever had been said.  Hovering over them both was Mike, who seemed to be checking Trent’s vital signs as he held onto one of his wrists and counted the pulse rate under his breath.

Their conversation stopped though when Kurt walked in and Trent looked at him curiously.  Awake now, Kurt could see what Mike was talking about.  Trent definitely did not look like someone capable of killing Others.  He was stocky and baby faced, with eyes that looked at Kurt with fear.  

“Afternoon Kurt.” Mike greeted as soon as he was done with Trent’s pulse and had jotted it down on his clipboard.

Blaine too, smiled in his direction and gave him a nod of greeting.  He still looked exhausted and Kurt wondered how well, if at all, he had slept last night because he looked completely worn and in this moment, even Trent looked healthier.

“Hey guys.  Just checking in.”

Blaine looked to Trent and noted, “Kurt.  The one who picked up the call.”

That seemed to trigger a memory in Trent, and Kurt watched as his face relaxed and an all too cheeky smile filled the lower half of his face.  “Well I guess I have you to thank for my life  Kurt!  Thanks!”

Kurt’s eyebrow crooked up and with a quick shake of his head he dismissed the gratitude.  “I didn’t do a damn thing.” Regardless, he took a few more steps forward.  “You look better.”

It helped that Trent’s leg was currently covered up by a blanket so Kurt didn’t have to see it, though it was evident by how much bulkier one side of the bed was compared to the other where the injury was.  

Trent smiled again.  Actually it was more like he beamed and Kurt wondered if the guy knew that he was in here because he almost died and was now separated from his group because he looked positively joyful.  “I’m happy to be here and not in a hole in the ground that’s for sure.  Thanks to you and Dr. Mike and -”

“Again.  I’m not a doctor.” Mike noted as he continued to make notes on his clipboard.

“- and the other women who work here as MEDICS…” Trent put extra emphasis on the word that the community had approved of for their medical personnel to let Mike know that he had been listening. “... and Canary here to help me get better.  I’m sure I’ll be fine in no time!”

Kurt’s eyebrow remained up as he glanced towards Mike who gave him a look back.  So Mike hadn’t given him the full prognosis - at least not yet.  And then of course, there was the name ascribed to Blaine.  “Canary?”

Blaine and Trent chuckled together as Kurt questioned the name and in the next instant, Blaine was shrugging off his jacket to expose his arms, the one facing Kurt had a black tattoo of a bird, probably a Canary, and the actual word Canary in a banner which the bird was perched upon.  “It’s my Warbler codename.”

“Warbler….?”

Mike snickered a little and walked out of the room, giving Kurt a pat on the back as he left, “You’re going to love hearing all about this.”

Kurt glanced to Mike as he left and then back to Blaine and Trent, waiting for the explanation.  It was Blaine who gave it.

“Well… our group - we’re the Warblers.”

“That’s… unique.” Kurt said, trying to keep his eyebrows from lifting off his forehead.

“Anyhow… we all have a name of a songbird.  I’m Canary, Trent here is Chickadee…” As if on cue, Trent turned slightly so that Kurt could see that he had a similar tattoo on his left bicep - though of a different bird and with his declared name written beneath it. “And Nick is Robin and Jeff is Bluejay and…..”

“I get it.  Why birds?” Kurt cut in.  Really, knowing which of their friends was which bird was useless information to Kurt since he didn’t even know the names of most of their friends.

“Well when we formed our group… we noticed that so many groups were trying to create this badass image.  You know how many groups have called themselves the Wolfpack? It’s beyond cliche.” Trent started in on the explanation now.

Kurt snickered a little.  He could imagine.  Why any group would need a special name though was beyond him, but because he hadn’t been away from this community since they settled here, he didn’t know how other humans were living since The Tides, so he certainly wasn’t going to question the necessity of a special name.

“Anyhow… most of us were in a school called Dalton and part of a group called The Warblers there.  Blaine and I were only looking into going though at that point, we never actually were a part of the original Warbler school group.. anyhow.  With all the Wolfpacks and Bearpacks and Sharks and Lions out there… we just decided to be a little bit more unique and go with Warblers.”

Kurt nodded.  It made sense he supposed - if not somewhat still ridiculous.  “Which is why your quads had bird names all over them.”

“Precisely.” Blaine noted with a grin and a nod, pulling his jacket up over his arms again as he shrugged it back on. “Anyhow.  We ran into this guy who had been in a prison and did tattoos for the guys when he was in there and he agreed to give us all our own tattoos a few years ago in exchange for some goods.”

Kurt didn’t know that he would let someone who had been a prison tattoo artist touch his arm, but clearly these guys didn’t have the same reservations.  He just nodded in acknowledgement of Blaine’s words because, really, what could you say to someone who had just excitedly spoken about how he had let some old world criminal ink up his skin forever with a bird since he was a part of a group named after songbirds?

Luckily Trent chuckled as he recalled the memory Blaine spoke of and added his own take, “I remember we got soooo drunk to get them done.  Some of us were so worried that women would take one look at them and decide we weren’t worth their time with silly birds on us!”

More laughter from the pair and Kurt had to refrain from rolling his eyes.  While he was fighting for survival in this community, along with everyone else, this Warbler group was more interested in body modification and getting some action.  It really was surprising one of them hadn’t had a stupidity induced accident earlier.

“Why bother to get them done if you had second thoughts and needed the alcohol?” Kurt asked then, finding a spot on the wall to lean against.  They really needed to get a chair in here for guests.

“Oh… well… Wes, David, and Thad… our leaders, decided on it.”

“Indeed.”

“Speaking of which….” Blaine sat up and off the bed, stretching a little in place before turning to Kurt.  “... I was hoping you could take me to whomever is in charge of this place.  I need to thank them for letting us in and also figure out what I can do to not get in the way and also get our own food.  I brought as many canned things as I could to start off, but I’m going to have to scavenge or hunt or something to make up for the rest…”

Kurt smirked a little.  “We don’t have traditional leadership here.  Everyone votes… usually.  Your situation was a little different.  It was urgent, according to Mike, to get to Trent quickly if we were going to help him and most people were in bed by the time we picked up your call.  Besides, you’re both temporarily here.”

“So… I have to talk to everyone about….”

Kurt shook his head.  “No.  We’ll take whatever canned food you have to the chefs and let them determine how much more you need to bring in to cover for yourself and Trent.  As far as thanking people, just make sure you do your part around here and don’t get in trouble.”

Blaine nodded and Trent spoke up from behind him.  “Are you sure about this Blaine?  I don’t want to be the source of your troubles… I mean… I’m so grateful for what you’ve done for me, but this is going to be so much harder for you than it will be for me and -”

“Shut it Chickadee.” Blaine snapped back gently, and grinned towards his friend.  “We joined together, we leave together.  I know you’d do the same for me and I’m happy to do it for you.  You alright if I let Kurt take me to get the food I brought along for us and take it to his chefs?”

Trent nodded and Kurt’s brow furrowed as he thought back to the last minute.   He was pretty sure he had only just described how the food situation would work, not volunteered himself as Blaine’s escort around town.  Regardless, better him than Mike.  Mike was not a fighter if the need arose and Kurt would make sure Blaine knew his place here in the community.

Kurt pushed off the wall and turned to leave, Blaine giving Trent a rushed goodbye as he followed after Kurt into the community.

As they walked to Blaine’s apartment, Kurt definitely noticed all the eyes on the new addition, and it was clear Blaine noticed too as he avoided everyone’s glances by looking down at the ground and walking with Kurt as quickly as his feet would let him to the apartment suite Tina had made up for him.

It wasn’t much, but single people couldn’t expect much more than a single room anyhow.  One of the single mattresses they had pilfered from an old furniture store years ago lay on the floor with a sheet and a blanket which confirmed that Blaine hadn’t slept last night given the unused state of it all.  Blaine’s luggage was all off the side, sitting open and he had clearly been trying to organize what he had brought better.  One of the backpacks and one of the cargo bins was now entirely filled with canned goods, ready to be delivered to the chefs.  

“Would you mind helping me?” Blaine asked of Kurt with a weak smile.  He had already picked up the cargo bin when he asked and so Kurt was left with the slightly lighter backpack - though he was sure the seams on the bottom were strained to the max with all the weight it was carrying in it now.

“Shit.  You boys really like the old world food…” Kurt grunted out with a grimace as he pulled on Blaine’s pack over his own - which only had his water bottles in it anyhow.

“Well it’s convenient since we’re on the go most of the time… though we have had to talk about changing things up since it’s getting harder to come by all the time.”

Kurt walked out ahead of Blaine, trying not to let the bag on his back weigh him down as he led Blaine to the food storehouse.  “You always carry this much food on you?”

“No…  We usually have extra fuel in our cargo holds which takes up a lot of the space but I traded the guys our fuel for more food.  Most of them were happy to help out.”

“And the others…?”

“A few of them want to change things up…” Blaine admitted pensively as he followed Kurt, every now and then adjusting the weight on his hands which no doubt were strained themselves.

“Hmm.” Kurt wasn’t actively trying to get more information out of Blaine, but seemed easy enough to do so, and it was probably better he learned more about this man and his friend. “In here.”

Kurt pushed open the door and held it open for Blaine who thanked him under his breath as he shuffled in with the load.  He glanced over the eyes all taking in stock of the Blaine in the warehouse until he saw Brittany. “Brit!”

The blonde bounced over, eager to take a break in counting their inventory like they did everyday to make sure no one was stealing. “Kurt!  New guy!”

Brittany also didn’t have the wariness so many other people had.  She just saw people as people without any negative assumptions, which meant she wouldn’t be staring at Blaine the entire time as if he were an axe murderer about to cut into her.

“Blaine’s fine.” The man beside Kurt set down the cargo bin and extended one of his now very red hands to Brittany who eagerly took it and shook it back.

“Nice to meet you.  What can I help you guys with?”

“Blaine here has a bunch of canned food he’s submitting to cover his and the guy in the clinic, Trent’s, food.  Will you figure out how much he has and how much more he’ll need to get through the winter?”

Brittany looked down at the cargo bin, and towards the backpack Kurt was happily stripping off his back before kneeling down and opening the bin to peek at it’s contents. “Ooo!  Spaghetti-O’s!  I remember having those as a kid! Pineapple… you have pineapple!”

Kurt salivated immediately on hearing that and had to swallow it back as several other chefs came running over to take stock of what Blaine had brought, making notes on items that were rare and in demand.  He leaned over to Blaine and whispered.

“Any peaches?”

He got a curious look in response and then a nod, which nearly shot his heart right out of his chest.  Peaches.  Real peaches.  Sure they had to be overly syrupy being stuck in a can for so long, but they would have the flavour.

“I’ll bring in five rabbits in your name if you give me a can of peaches before they can inventory it.”

It was more than a good deal, and Blaine, despite not being a part of this community and not knowing how things worked, seemed to figure that out on his own.  He unzipped the backpack, which hadn’t been touched by the chefs yet, dug into it for a moment, and pulled out a can of peaches - holding it out to Kurt who greedily grabbed the offering and hugged it to his chest.  He was going to treat himself tonight.

Brittany chuckled as she noticed the action, the only one of her people that wasn’t totally engrossed in looking over the new foods, and then shooed them away.  “I’ll let you guys know.  In the meantime, I didn’t see either of you at breakfast or lunch so you should go grab something.”

Blaine’s stomach growled then in perfect timing, causing an exchange of laughs between himself and Brittany while Kurt carefully put the can of peaches into his own backpack before nodding to Brittany and walking out with the other man hot on his trail.

“So you haven’t eaten or slept.  How exactly are you on your feet right now?”

Blaine shrugged up his shoulders.  “Sheer willpower I guess.”

Kurt didn’t respond to that and led Blaine into the kitchen, going behind the counter and grabbing a couple of leftover meals.  He then walked back out and sat down at one of the tables, watching as Blaine looked around curiously before joining him.

“This is like.. one of those old timey western places.”

Kurt smirked and gave him a nod.  The kitchen, as they called it now, was built over the old saloon and still had the look of a saloon inside - complete with swinging doors and wooden bar.  The actual kitchen wasn’t in here, but it’s where people came to get food and eat together, so it had acquired the name.

Kurt bit into the sandwich he had before him hungrily and tried to ignore how Blaine watched him eat for a moment before finally succumbing to his own hunger and picking up his sandwich to eat as well.  Most meals were either served on bread of some kind since they didn’t have the excess water to wash plates and it also meant less clean up.  Kurt had grabbed a couple of tomato and cucumber sandwiches for them to eat along with some wedges of cooked potatoes on the side.  

“Oh god… this is really good.” Blaine moaned over his sandwich before eagerly digging into it again.

Kurt licked over his lips to save some of the juice of the tomato that had slipped there and nodded, “They do a good job.  I can’t imagine living off of canned foods like you’ve been.”

Blaine shook his head.  “I can’t imagine it either now that I’ve had this.”

“Well I can imagine your stomach might complain when you rejoin your bird friends in the spring.”

“Mmm… yes.  They’re going to be so jealous when I tell them about the food here. We sometimes run into other groups that are settled and have their own small farms, but nothing this big or organized.  There must be no access to any major waterways around here.”

Kurt just nodded his confirmation to Blaine, continuing to eat as he did.  Kurt was a neat eater and chewed his food thoroughly between eat bite to savour the flavour.  Blaine on the other hand didn’t seem to have the patience to fully chew his food, or at least was really just that hungry, because he tore into the sandwich like it might run away on him, spilling tomato juice all down his fingers which he sloppily sucked and licked off.

“You eat like a five year old.”

Blaine chuckled at that.  “Sorry.  I really was quite hungry but didn’t want to be rude about asking.  I didn’t even bring a can opener with me despite having all those cans of food.”

Kurt shook his head. “I guess I’ll give you a tour once you’ve finished up.  Or at least once I’ve finished up since I image you’ll be done before me.”

Another chuckled erupted from Blaine and sure enough, he finished well ahead of Kurt who took his time despite Blaine fidgetiness across from him.  

When Kurt was done, he explained to Blaine how meals worked - three per day, anything more you had to hunt or gather for yourself.  If you went scavenging, you were expected to give at least 90% of your findings back to the community.  100% for Blaine since he was also expected to help take care of Trent’s food.  When there were dishes to be washed, you had to use your own water rations.  

Blaine nodded as Kurt explained, not speaking at all, and so Kurt led him out then for a tour of the community.  He showed him where to get his daily water rations, where he could trade for non-essentials - like extra clothing, soaps, spices, and even little trinkets.  Kurt made a point of suggesting to Blaine that he could even get a razor there if he wanted, to which Blaine shrugged.

“I need to give everything I can to the community so Trent is taken care of.”

Kurt snorted a little at that. “No one is going to care if you trade for a razor.  In fact, it might even improve your standing.”

Blaine rubbed over the black scruff on his face.  “Really?  You think?”

“You look like a hobo.”

Blaine laughed once again and Kurt knew then that this man was easily amused.  “Everyone tends to look a little homeless when our planet has been overrun by Others and our homes are no more.”

“Still.”

Blaine continued to follow along after Kurt like a puppy, taking in the sights and avoiding the suspicious eyes of other members of the community.  He. thankfully, didn’t push Kurt into awkward conversation and only asked the odd clarifying question as Kurt showed him where the workers office was, explained what they did, explained the guard situation, and how most people in the community had an assigned role.

“What’s your role?”

Kurt shook his head. “I started off as a kind of worker.  My dad had an auto shop so I did mechanic work - but that got slow after the first couple years once our vehicles died and it was decided we didn’t want to attract any unnecessary attention with the noise they make.  Then I took up hunting to help our food supply.  Turns out I’m a decent hunter so I do a bit of that, help out with guarding, fix our solar generators when they need attention, and go on scavenging trips.”

Blaine grinned at him. “So you’re the local jack of all trades!”

“You could say that.” Kurt said with a shrug.  Really he didn’t fit in well in any specific group so, just like he was before The Tides, he stayed on the periphery.

Kurt then showed Blaine where the invalids and elderly lived, in that old brothel that always gave him an involuntary shudder when he passed by it.  He didn’t say anything to Blaine, but Kurt suspected that Trent might end up in there if they couldn’t get him walking.  

“What do you do out here for fun?”

Kurt looked back at Blaine, seeing it was a genuine question by how he waited for Kurt’s response with rapt attention. “There’s a decent board games collection, some people have instruments they play, there’s a group of women that have made it their mission to decorate their homes with their do-it-yourself crafts, every now and then they hold a dance… but for the most part, we just live day by day.”

“I meant… what do YOU do.” Blaine reiterated, holding his gaze on Kurt.

“Ah…”  Kurt had to think a moment about that.  What did he do for fun?  What was fun even for him?  “... I don’t.  I keep myself busy.”

“Sounds boring.”

Kurt felt his chest tighten up and he whipped his head around to look down at the other man.  “It SOUNDS like I’m making sure I stay alive out here and help others do so as well.  You have no right to judge how boring or not my life is.”

Blaine’s hands shot up, palms out in surrender.  “Whoa.  Okay.  Sorry.  Didn’t mean to upset you.  Sorry.”

Kurt huffed and looked back ahead as they walked, “In the future.  Keep your opinions to yourself.”

“Sure thing.”

Kurt kept the rest of the tour quick and ended back at the clinic, dropping Blaine back off to spend time with Trent while he went to go check his traps and snares.  For some reason the simple question of what he did for fun was upsetting him and he couldn’t figure out why.  It shouldn’t have been an issue, except that no matter how hard he tried to think, he couldn’t come up with an answer.  Fun wasn’t in his life anymore and he couldn’t remember the last time he considered something being fun.  Sure the world had changed for him and everyone else, but he still saw other people occupying themselves in their free time with hobbies and friends.  Kurt, however, had nothing else.  He was good at hunting, but he didn’t really enjoy it any more than he enjoyed eating or washing himself - it was just something he did to exist.  Beyond that he just worked and slept.  

The fact that fun was no longer in his vocabulary meant that Kurt wasn’t living anymore, he was just simply, existing.


	6. Chapter 5: Neighbours

 

_**“It's a perfectly human instinct to want to be near water.” Stone Gossard** _

 

He was dancing and swaying to the music - real music.  Like he hadn’t heard in years.  Dressed to the nines in a tuxedo along with everyone else in a beautiful ballroom.  He felt light, carefree, absolutely wonderful.

And then Kurt woke up.

He hated that moment between sleeping and being fully awake where he remembered his dreams and longed to just lay back and hide in them.  It was the worst temptation for him.  After the Tides, so many people took to drinking or drug use to hide in their fantasies, but at this point there were no more drug dealers and alcohol was saved for special events.  You couldn’t even have a simple addiction in this place.

The smokers had been the worst.  When the cigarettes ran out, some of them went through their cold turkey withdrawal alright, but others tried to smoke everything else in sight - grass included, to try and get their fix.  Now they were fine, but at the time they had a whole group of people who were sweaty and shaking constantly with withdrawal symptoms.

Kurt went about his morning routine, stoking the fire in his hut so the coals kept the place warm throughout the day and changing into a cleaner outfit.  He never used the word clean to describe his clothes, because for all the scrubbing and washing he did, he never could get them as clean as they could have been with a washer and dryer.  Nor did they ever smell so good.  The best he could hope for was that they didn’t smell of mildew.

He got his water rations, came back to the shack, washed himself, and carefully shaved his face.  He had a small mirror that he used to shave, but years of being subjected to the elements, especially the winter cold, meant it was foggy and cracked.  Kurt kept meaning to grab a new one on a scavenging, but he always seemed to forget and since he only ever used it to shave, it wasn’t a huge concern.  It wasn’t like he had a nighttime skin regimen or anything.

When he was all done, Kurt checked his traps and snares and then brought in a gopher that had gotten caught to the chefs.  He went to check the guard schedule to see when he was patrolling next, and then finally went to check up on their guests at the clinic.

Kurt really didn’t know how Blaine expected to help with food since he had spent almost all of his waking hours in the clinic with Trent.  He understood that they were close, and that since Blaine was in a new place it was easier to be with someone he knew, but if he intended to make good on his promise, then he needed to start contributing back to the community.

Carole gave Kurt a sweet smile and a nod as he entered the clinic.  She was with Sam, a worker, and he was showing her something on his hand and saying that it it didn’t bug him until he woke up this morning and she in turn chastised him for not coming to see her sooner.  

“Hey Kurt.” A pair of voices both called out to greet him as he entered what had now become Trent’s room.

Blaine had gotten a chair in here at some point, which he was now sitting on beside Trent’s bed.  With the help of a lot of old throw pillows, Trent was sitting up in his bed.  Blaine, as always, looked completely exhausted and Kurt was beginning to think that was his normal look.  Trent on the other hand, looked completely well rested and perky.  If it wasn’t for the fact that his leg was healing, Kurt would expect him to be bouncing around the room given his general disposition.

“Just checking in.” Kurt nodded to both of them.  “Anything I can help with?”

Trent, ever polite, shook his head with a smile, “Everything is just peachy thanks.”

Blaine’s gaze shifted up to Kurt and then down to the floor, and it looked like he had something to ask of Kurt, but didn’t speak up.  Kurt made a mental note to talk to him later to see if he was reading him right.

“Alright then.  Have a good day.”

Kurt left and nodded again to Carole on his way out, who was wrapping a bandage around Sam’s hand and muttering about how he needed to take better care of himself while Sam groaned and apologized for his apparent idiocy over and over.  It wasn’t the first time Kurt had seen Sam in here for some injury, and if the rumors were true, he got into trouble by trying to impress Mercedes.  Clearly the boy didn’t know how to go about impressing her because if the way she ran the workers was any indication, she was impressed by dedication and getting things done right.

Not that Kurt was exactly an expert on the way women worked though.  

The rest of the day went by in its usual blur.  He rode out into the woods and stalked a deer for several hours before shooting it fatally and then bringing it back to the community atop an old sled fixed with wheels he had the horse drag.  He brought in the five rabbits he had promised Blaine for the peaches, which he still hadn’t eaten and was saving for an especially bad day, and agreed to go on another scavenging trip scheduled for a few days away.  

This particular evening though was the community meeting.  Every few weeks the community got together in the field just outside the town limits where news was shared and issues were shared.  The meal they got for the evening was always extra good on these particular days because in addition to their supper, they also would get dessert.  The only ones who didn’t attend the meetings were those who were especially invalid and whichever medic was on duty.  Kurt presumed Trent would be staying behind, but Blaine should go.

He wondered if anyone had even told Blaine.

That question in his mind led him back to the clinic prior to when the meeting was scheduled to begin and nodding to Mike who seemed to be deeply ingrained in reading a textbook and didn’t even noticed Kurt go by.  When he got to Trent’s room, he discovered Trent was sleeping, with a full on snore, and Blaine looked ready to join him in napping as he laid back all too relaxed in his chair.

“Come on Blaine.  It’s monthly meeting.”

Blaine groggily looked up, squinting as he looked over at Kurt in a half-sleep haze.  “Wha?”

“Every month there’s a community meeting.  You’re coming.”

“Wha?  Why?”  Blaine was rubbing his eyes now and leaning forward.

“Because until spring, you’re a part of the community and you have to participate.  Now get your ass up or we’ll be late.”

Blaine stood up and braced the small of his back with his hands for a moment as he stretched himself there with a groan.  That chair couldn’t have been comfortable and yet he spent so much time in it.  After that he walked towards Kurt who turned when he got close enough and led the way to the field.

It was already packed, with the children playing in groups throughout the mix of adults who mostly sat on blankets they had brought out as they ate their meal.  Kurt and Blaine lined up for their serving and Kurt watched as Blaine just looked around with ever widening eyes at the crowd.

“Kurt… how many people are there in this community?”

Kurt did the math in his head, “Somewhere around three hundred give or take.”

Blaine shook his head in disbelief, “I have never seen this many humans in one place ever… not even half as many… Why haven’t I noticed how many were here until now?”

“Most of the workers have been out collecting the harvest and there’s also a lot of people helping the chefs preserve and keep that food for the winter.  Depending on when you get up - most people are out for the day already.”

“Wow…”

They got their dinner - potato wedges (that were even lightly salted), roasted green beans and carrots, and stewed venison pieces all served on a piece of flatbread.  Kurt caught a glimpse of the dessert and groaned though.

“Not crab apple’s  again…”

“Really?” Blaine asked from behind him, already taking bites of his dinner even though they hadn’t even sat down yet.  Kurt had to wonder if the boy was born in a barn with his manners - or lack thereof.

“We found all these crab apple trees a month ago and now everything remotely resembling anything sweet has been made with them.  Crab apple jam, crab apple salad… and that looks like…”

“Crab apple cobbler Kurt!” Brittany announced and dished him out a slice of it on top of a space on his flatbread.  

Kurt wrinkled up his nose at the item, but thanked Brittany and didn’t say anything until he found a clear spot to sit in, Blaine joining him already half through his own meal.

“Carrots for cobbler?”

Blaine looked over at him, licking his fingers already from the salt on the potato wedges and nodded quickly, “Oh hell yes.”

They swapped the items in question and Kurt ate slowly while Blaine engulfed his meal rapidly and then laid back on the ground with a groan, citing he was beyond full.

He was almost kind of cute like that.

Kurt was just finishing up when Rachel stood up in the middle of the crowd.  “Thank you all for coming out tonight!  I haven’t seen so many of you since you’ve been out all day so it’s nice to get a chance to catch up!  We’re going to start tonight with news from the clinic, then the workers, the guards, and then other points of note.”

Blaine leaned over to whisper to Kurt, now sitting up again since his stomach had apparently settled. “I thought you said you didn’t have a leader.  Who’s she?”

Kurt leaned back to whisper his response.  “Rachel.  She’s not a leader.  She’s one of the teachers for the kids here and she’s just good at getting everyone to pay attention to her so she usually starts things up.”

Blaine made a small o with his mouth and nodded, paying attention as Carole stood up and updated the group on their supply levels, the fact they had successfully patched up Trent’s leg, and to remind everyone that an older woman, Mrs. Crawsky, was in the final stages of her cancer and to please pay her a visit or keep her in your prayers and thoughts.  She then asked for volunteers to bring the tub into the clinic in the next week.

“What tub?” Whispered Blaine.

“When it gets cold, hypothermia becomes a real and regular issue.  They have one of those old style tubs in storage they bring into the clinic and keep over a small fire with water in it in case they need to heat someone up - but only if the hypothermia is mild.  A warm bath isn’t good for someone with severe hypothermia.”

“What do they do if it’s severe hypothermia?” Blaine asked with a hint of dread in his voice.

Leaning back on his hands, Kurt watched as Carole noted down people who were volunteering and telling them she’d let them know when they were ready to move the tub while he responded to Blaine. “Aside from pray for the best?  CPR, wrapping up the person in warmed blankets, and trying to get them to drink warm fluids.  Apparently they did have the technology to help people with severe hypothermia before the Tides in hospitals, but now we don’t have access to that.”

Then Carole noted that her colleague, the midwife, had also developed cancer, and pending their ability to do something about it (which was sadly unlikely in this place), they would be training another medic.

After the crowd glanced over to the midwife mournfully and apologized to her for her bad luck, and really, she was well into her sixties so she was already living longer than most people did out here, Carole spoke up again.

“Since Kurt has once again declined training, we’re going to open it up to other interested persons and then judge their qualities as a potential medic.”

No one look surprised at that, aside from Blaine who arched an eyebrow in Kurt’s line of sight.  When Kurt didn’t respond, he asked, “Why wouldn’t you take them up on that?”

“Because it’s not for me.” Kurt shot back so directly that Blaine wouldn’t question him further on it.  Carole and Mike had asked him yesterday when he stopped by the clinic.  His stomach had gotten stronger over the years, and blood and gore no longer fazed him.  What did upset him though was the thought that he might have to tell someone, some child, there was nothing that he could do for their parent.  Or worse, tell a parent there was nothing they could do for their child.  What heart he did have couldn’t take it, and even though he might have the steady hands and the ability to think quickly in tough situations, he knew he wouldn’t be able to handle being responsible for someone’s death.

So Kurt had politely declined the offer once again.  A few years ago they had asked and he had declined then and Mike had been selected in his place, and Mike was certainly better suited for it than he was.  Now they’d find someone else who was better suited again.

And even though they didn’t always have the need for three medics, it allowed them to cycle in eight hour shifts and have the support they needed for emergencies.  

“So… hypothermia.  How do I make sure I don’t get that?” Blaine murmured over as Mercedes started talking about harvest inventory.

“You find and wear thermal underwear all the time, under clothing that’s warm already.  Double up on socks.  Get outerwear that not only keep the warmth in but breaks the wind.  Always keep your head and fingers covered, and never go out in a blizzard without someone with you in case you fall in deep snow.  Reuse tracks that have already been made and keep your back to the wind.”

Kurt was matter-of-fact as he described the necessities, though was inwardly amused by how Blaine’s face went pale and then gawked a little as Kurt went on to describe how to tell if you had frostbite and how to never go out with wet hair in the cold.

“... it will turn into icicles and can snap off easily.  Though in your case, a haircut wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

Blaine managed a weak smile at that.  “Because I look like a hobo?”

“Because you look like a hobo.” Kurt reaffirmed plainly, looking back towards Mercedes as she spoke.

For the rest of the announcements, they sat in relative silence together, although Blaine would periodically ask Kurt to clarify something or identify who was speaking.  For Kurt, it was a new experience because he usually sat by himself at these things, maintaining his lone wolf status.  It wasn’t because he didn’t want to sit with anyone, but because they avoided him and that had become status quo.  Because it was new to him, it was uncomfortable, but in a nice way.  Too often he only had conversations with the voice in his head and that voice was all too often negative.  Blaine was, at the very least, pleasant to speak to.  He didn’t complain or criticize, and certainly seemed open to learning about the community in order to be accepted as one of them.

That being said, Kurt was ready to be alone again once the meeting was done.  Most people stuck around and used the meeting as an excuse to play music on the instruments they had and dance and play, but for Kurt, it was more socialization than he could handle and he was ready to get to bed.  So when he got up to leave, and Blaine got up to follow, he had to say something.

“You can stay.  Make friends.  I’m off for the night.”

Blaine smiled meakly, his head ducking a bit as he looked to Kurt.  “Actually I was hoping I could talk to you about something….”

Kurt winced.  He recalled the look Blaine had given him earlier in the clinic and also remembered how he had made a mental note to ask Blaine what was going on.  Apparently that mental note had gotten lost in a pile in his head and now he was going to have to delay sleep for it.  

He nodded to Blaine and walked off, Blaine walking quickly beside him, having to walk faster to account for the fact that not only did Kurt have long legs and could take longer strides with them, but always walked with a sense of urgency to begin with.  They were already halfway to Kurt’s shack when the quiet became unbearable.  He imagined that Blaine would have asked his question the instant they moved out of earshot but it seemed like Blaine was waiting for something.

“Well?”

“Well…”  Blaine shoved his hands in his pocket, darting his eyes up to Kurt. “... I haven’t been able to sleep.”

Kurt squinted a little and looked towards Blaine incredulously.  “I’m not a doctor or medic or anything.  Talk to Mike or Carole if you have a health issue.”

“Oh.  No.  It’s not health related… well… not directly….” Blaine said, eyes rounding as he realized he had sent Kurt the wrong message.

“Then what?”

A sigh followed and after a moment more of steady walking, Blaine spoke again.  “The walls in that place as so thin…. I hear everyone else.  Above, below, beside…..”

“You’re not paying rent so you shouldn’t complain.”

“And I’m not!  At least not about that….”

Kurt groaned inwardly.  Blaine was going to drag it out and all he wanted to do was get to bed.

“... The people above me… well they have two kids and a baby and that baby cries.  I’ve been around babies before… but never this much.  Everytime it cries I end up awake for hours because I can’t settle myself down…”

“Again, not seeing how this affects me.”

“... and the guy beside me… he’s old.  Like almost to the point where he should be in that home you pointed out to me on the tour.  I’m pretty sure he wets himself and I don’t know how to politely address that….”

“Waiting for the point.”

“... on the other side there’s a couple and they talk about how I have an ear chain, and I’m sorry, but everywhere else those things are normal so it’s weird that you don’t have them here.  But the guy, I’ve heard him talk about how he’s keeping a knife on him just in case I make any wrong move…”

“So don’t make any wrong moves.”

“... Then there’s the guy below me.  He had some people over the first night I was here and they talked about swiping my stuff while I slept.  I don’t keep a lot, but what I do keep is important to me or at least hard to come by, so I end up…”

“ - Afraid of sleeping lest they make good on the threat.”

“Right.”

Kurt reached the door of his shack at this point and pushed it open, though leaned in the doorway to, hopefully, finish off the conversation.  There wasn’t really enough room for two people to be comfortable in his shack, and aside from the odd visit from Brittany and Mike when he had been sick in the past to deliver food and medicine, he didn’t have visitors.  It was purely his space and his alone.

Blaine peeked behind Kurt into the shack and then wrung his hands together nervously.

“So I get that you’re having a hard time sleeping in that situation, but I can’t help you with that.  If you want a new room assignment you need to see Mercedes who keeps tabs on who stays where.”

“Actually… “ Blaine pressed his lips together before finally coming out with it. “... I was thinking… maybe I could hot bunk with you?”

Kurt just looked at Blaine for a moment, making sure he wasn’t actually making a very bad joke that someone must have put him up to, but the sincerity shone through on Blaine’s face, particularly in hopeful, honey eyes.

“No.”

That made those honey eyes widen in panic, “Please!  I’ll sleep whenever you don’t want to!  You wouldn’t even notice me!”

“No.”

“Kurt… come on…”  Blaine glanced behind him, back towards where the town was and then back to Kurt.  “I can’t get a decent night of sleep there.  I’m living off the bits I can nap when I’m with Trent and I have most of my stuff hidden under his bed in the clinic right now but Mike says I can’t keep it there.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You’re the only one who’s been truly nice to me… and I know it’s a lot to ask but I feel like I’m going to fall over and I don’t know how I’m supposed to help with anything when it’s an effort right now to keep myself upright!”

Kurt groaned and rubbed his palm over his face and back over his hair.  The guy just did not get it.  It wasn’t an option.  It wasn’t going to happen.

“Please Kurt…”

Kurt’s head snapped up then.  He needed to make this clear.  He couldn’t have Blaine begging him to share his space later because it seemed like he was waffling on the idea.

“No.  Stop asking.  It’s not going to happen.  Short of making your own place to stay, you’re stuck where you are so learn to adapt to your situation.  You made your choice now live with it.”

He wished he could slam the door for dramatic effect, but he doubted his small home could withstand the shake it would cause, so instead he closed the door on Blaine as he backed into his home and waited until he heard footsteps walking away before removing his hand from said door.  

He hoped that would be the end of it.

And it seemed to.  Blaine didn’t bring it up again over the next couple days when Kurt stopped by the clinic, though he looked more exhausted than ever.  If Kurt wasn’t so preoccupied and set on how right he was about the matter, it might have made him feel guilty.  But Kurt knew he was correct when it came to it.  It was better for Blaine to be closer to Trent, and better for Kurt to be alone and not having to worry about someone else touching his stuff.  He didn’t have a precious lot in this world, but what he did have, he didn’t want to share.

“You should try setting heated rocks from the fire into the tub so we can limit the wear on the bottom of this thing.” Kurt intoned as he smoothed a hand over the lumpy base of the old tub which had now been moved into one of the rooms of the clinic.

Mike rubbed a hand over his chin as he stood back and watched Kurt thoughtfully.  Along with Kurt, Mike’s chin was smooth, but more because of his asian descent than for any other reason.  “Actually, that makes a lot of sense.  Why didn’t we think of that before?”

“That’s how they heat up the sweatlodges too.  Water poured over rocks from a fire…” Kurt said as he stood up.  It wasn’t a very common event, given their need to preserve water, but a few times in the winter, the aboriginal elders from the area had a traditional sweat - since there was so much snow they could use for their water.  Kurt had gone a few times, and while he didn’t care for sweating in the usual sense, the sweat he experienced in a sweatlodge was different - cleansing even.  Plus it was one of the few things he could rely on to help with the kinks in his back.

“Never been to one.  Keep getting invited though.” Mike noted.

“I was skeptical too.  It all sounded a little hokey to me.”  Kurt internally winced at his use of the word hokey.  That was definitely something his dad would have said.  “But I’m glad I did.  You don’t have to buy into the spiritual side of it, you can always go to sooth the joints and just to enjoy it.”

Mike nodded, eyes wandering over the room as he mentally planned out how he wanted the hypothermia relief room to be set up for the winter.  It was such a common occurrence that they needed a room dedicated to it - though Kurt often wondered if some people didn’t just acquire a mild case of hypothermia on purpose so they could have an excuse to have a warm bath.

With Mike occupied, Kurt wandered into Trent’s room to say farewell.  He was leaving with Santana and Quinn for another scavenging mission and probably wouldn’t be back for a couple days.  Both Blaine and Trent cheerfully said goodbye and good luck, and that was the last Kurt would see of them until his return.

The scavenging went as well as it usually did.  Since they had already ransacked most of the shops in the town they went to, they were now going through homes and apartments one by one.  The horses were well loaded by the time they returned and Kurt had even found himself a wealth of new socks for the winter.  One could not understate the importance of good socks in a Northern winter.

When they had unloaded the mix of clothing, recovered medicine and prescriptions, preserved foods, and blankets they had brought back, Kurt happily made his way back to his home, expecting to be able to just flop into his bed and sleep through until morning.

However, his home was not standing alone anymore.

When Kurt reached the point where he could see his shack, it was immediately evident that someone had decided to take up residence beside him.  Another structure, made of thin logs and bound together with twine, had been erected.  It was smaller than Kurt’s place, if that was even possible, and still looked like it was being made.  In fact, chopping wood beside the small abode was none other than Blaine.

Kurt was livid.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” was how he chose to greet Blaine, arms flying out to either side as he gesticulated wildly.

The other man stopped his chopping and set the axe into the log he was using as a base to chop the wood with.  He rubbed the sweat off his forehead with the back of his wrist and it was then Kurt noticed, that despite it already being chilly with autumn, that Blaine wasn’t wearing his trademark jacket.  He was in just his T-shirt, which was soaked in his own sweat.

“Building my own place.”

Kurt’s eyes snapped away from where they had fallen to staring at the abdomen lines beneath Blaine’s shirt and back up to his face, glaring furiously.  “No.  No.  I thought I made it clear.  You do not get to stay with me.  My space.  MINE.”

Blaine smirked and the twitch of his mouth upwards sent Kurt into an inner rage.  Damn smug idiot.  What the hell did he have to be so certain over?

“No.  You said I couldn’t stay with you and that my only other option was to make my own place to stay.  You also said people shouldn’t be alone when it gets real cold - so I’m doing us both a favour.”

Kurt’s jaw fell and he stared at Blaine as his mind processed that and corroborated the statement with his memories. Shit.  He had said all that, though this was far from what he intended to happen.

“I don’t like other people around me.” Kurt hissed between clenched teeth as he advanced on Blaine, who stepped backwards in turn.  “That’s the point.  I don’t want neighbours.  I live far away from the main town so I can be alone.”

Blaine’s eyes remained locked with Kurt as he moved in tandem with Kurt.  

“Well that’s sad.”

Kurt stopped then.  “Sad?!  Why?  Who the hell are you to judge if wanting to be alone makes me sad?”  His heart was racing and his mind became a jumble of different responses and emotions.  

“No one.  I’m no one…”  Blaine said softly, holding his ground now as he watched Kurt unfold before him.  “... but I just don’t understand why, in this world where there’s so few of us left, that you wouldn’t want to be around your own kind.  What is so horrible about other people?”

Kurt snorted. “Hell is other people…”  Catching Blaine’s quirked eyebrow he explained.  “It’s a quote from Sartre’s No Exit…. a play.”

“Don’t know it… but since we’re going to be neighbours maybe you can enlighten me on it.” Blaine suggested, prompting Kurt to groan and hide his face in his palm.

“You can’t live here.  You can’t.  This is my place…”

“Property laws and land claims don’t exist anymore Kurt…  I’m sorry you’re so upset about this.  I thought it would have been a nice surprise that you didn’t have to be so alone out here but….”

“But you thought wrong.”  Kurt snapped, looking back up.  “Make it somewhere else.”

Blaine glanced back, wide eyed, at the already mostly completely little hut and then back at Kurt, “I’ve been working on it since you left… three days.  Mike even came to help me out to have it ready.  I just can’t move it.”

Mike.  Mike would have endorsed this.  Kurt made a mental note to talk to Mike later.  “I don’t care.  Figure out how or rebuild somewhere else.”

“Why are you so insistent on needing your own space Kurt?”

“None of your business.  Just move it.”

Blaine shook his head.  “No.  I put a lot of work into this and it’s getting colder all the time.  I can’t restart.”

“Then stay in the town.  There was nothing wrong with where you were.”

“Except that I couldn’t trust anyone around me and couldn’t sleep yes.  Last night I slept out here and it was the first time I was truly able to relax since I got here.  I’m staying in there Kurt.”

That was it.  Kurt couldn’t think of anything he could say that would have any more weight with this man, and there wasn’t anything he could do.  It wasn’t in his nature to commit arson or assault, and both would get him in trouble.  They didn’t have an established law system out here, but people were pretty good at respecting general laws of human decency and it went without saying that those who committed any crimes could expect some kind of consequence.

Uttering a string of curses under his breath, Kurt stalked to his own shack then and had to remind himself once again not to slam the door.  That’s where he stayed all night, listening as Blaine chopped and dragged wood around, hearing every explicit word grumbled by Blaine whenever he made some kind of mistake, and otherwise brooding.  

Now how was he supposed to sleep comfortably?  Blaine might have an easy time of it, but now that Kurt had to worry about his things and his own safety, how was he supposed to be comfortable?  

But Kurt did manage to nod off, and stay asleep through the night, waking only once when he thought he heard the growl of a wolf but instead realizing it was his new neighbour snoring.  How obnoxious.  

When he went to get his water rations in the morning, Blaine was already awake and back to work setting up his little house.  Kurt had to give him some credit, he certainly seemed to have more of an idea when it came to building than Kurt did when he made his place.  Everything was neatly lined up and looked secure.  The mud he was packing between the spaces of the wood panels was the perfect consistency (it took Kurt a few years to figure that one out), and he was even making himself an elevated floor in half the room where Kurt guessed his bed would go.

If any good was to come of this, it would be that Kurt would claim that hut when Blaine left in the spring - if only for storage.  

Blaine gave Kurt a rudimentary nod from where he was engrossed in roof construction, and, deciding it wasn’t worth the hassle of continuing to fight over it, Kurt nodded back.

“So.  New neighbour.” Mike said with a smug grin when Kurt entered the clinic after retrieving his water bottles.

“Why the hell would you go along with this idea Mike?  Of all people here, I thought you might understand that I like my privacy?  Did I do something to piss you off and this is retaliation?”

Slightly taken aback, Mike took a moment to collect his thoughts before speaking while Kurt crossed his arms over his chest and stared patiently.

“Kurt… the way you live… it’s not healthy.”

“The fuck it is.  I get sick the least out of anyone in this town.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”  Mike shot back, staring back at Kurt just as intently.

Rolling his lips together, Kurt kept silent.  He did know it, but Mike wasn’t a psychologist.  Hell, he wasn’t even a real doctor.  How Kurt kept himself afloat was his business only, not Mike’s.

“I appreciate that you THINK you know what you’re talking about and you went along with this because you had good intentions, but you don’t know a damn thing about me.”

Mike cocked an eyebrow as he regarded Kurt in turn.  “Well, I know that you have progressively shut out everyone in this community and have this “fabulous” tendency to alienate those who want to try to befriend you.  I know you dedicate all your waking hours to guarding and scavenging and hunting but don’t really do anything aside from that.  I know that whenever you walk by the wall, you always stare at your dad’s name even when you think no one is paying attention.”

Kurt’s eyes formed slits as he glowered towards Mike, his insides seething.  “Why the hell does any of that matter?  Who told you to give a crap?”

“You do.” Mike said with a slap of his hand to the desk he was sitting at to accentuate his point.  “You gave up this position that I went into.  A position where it’s my job to give a crap about the people in this community - yourself included.  When you gave up this post, you gave me the job - and now I’m acting on it.  You know what you do when you shut everyone out like you do?”

Kurt stayed quiet, but waited for the point.

“You slowly become less human.  You know how humanity is defined?  The capacity for caring and befriending others.  The more you shut others out, the more you become like THEM.”

The Others.  Mike was implying that his coldness made him less human and more like them.  In a way, it did make sense - but it was definitely a stretch based on Mike’s loose interpretation of a definition.  That being said, it didn’t stop Mike from talking.

“Look, I know you used to get bugged about your ears when you were younger - but that’s so long in the past it’s irrelevant.  What you’re doing now though...  What you have been doing… it’s already making people more wary of you then I think you realize.  You need to open up more Kurt.  Enjoy the life you have.”

“You need to spend more time on treating people with actual problems and less time on creating imaginary issues for people Mike.” Kurt spat then, turning on his heels so he would effectively have the last word - no matter how pathetic he felt about his word choice.  Insulting Mike was a low blow, and not something he’d normally reduce himself to, but Mike’s words had left his head spinning and unable to come up with anything more coherent.

So to hell with him.  There was nothing wrong with him.  He did what he needed to do to survive and help out.  If anyone had a problem with that then they were the one’s who should seek mental help support because anyone who had an issue with how much Kurt did for everyone else was suffering from a severe case of stupidity.

He checked his traps, went hunting, found a massive pumpkin growing wild which he brought back instead of a kill, spent several hours patrolling the perimeter of the community, did a lesson on tanning for the kids at Finn and Rachel’s school house, checked the solar generators, tuned the piano they kept in the kitchen hall, and then went out to hunt goose.  

When he returned home, he had a goose to clean for himself.  He had missed supper and instead of making another trip out to the town, he decided to just prepare and roast his goose over his own fire.

Blaine had been busy during the day and his little shack looked complete.  He seemed to be in the process now of chopping wood for his own firepit and had lost his shirt at some point.  Like the rest of him, the skin on his torso was sunkissed, lean, and toned.  Unlike Kurt, he had curly black hair scattered over his chest and drawing a line down his stomach and into his jeans.

Since Blaine was preoccupied, Kurt let his eyes linger for just a moment before his sense of reason caught up with him and he cleared his throat on approach to let Blaine know he was back.

“God.  You stink.” Was how Kurt greeted him when Blaine was wiping the sweat off his brow with the discarded shirt which he had scooped up from the group where he must have dropped it earlier.  Kurt didn’t mean to be so abrupt with his choice of words, but the man did stink horribly of sweat at the moment and Kurt wondered how long it had been since he washed himself.

Thankfully, as seemed to be in Blaine’s nature, he laughed off the comment and nodded to Kurt, eyes drifting to the goose.  “I’ve been trying to get this done between visits to Trent.  I don’t want him to think I abandoned him but also want this done so I can just relax while I’m here.”

Kurt nodded and then turned to head back to his own shack, which looked positively dilapidated compared to the new hut standing steady beside it.  Suddenly he understood what it meant to be living in the ghetto.

“Hey!”

Kurt turned and looked back at Blaine questioningly.

“Thanks, for… you know.  Letting me stay by you.  I know it’s not really what you’re comfortable with but you could have made a much bigger deal out of it than you did and I appreciate it.”

Kurt gave him an acknowledging nod and was about to turn back to head into his own shack when Blaine spoke up again.

“What’s the duck for?”

“I missed supper and felt like cooking for myself tonight.  And it’s a Canadian Goose - not a duck.  You think for someone who has the nickname of Canary, you might know your birds better.”

A chuckle.  “Right.  Not too familiar with the local wildlife… this is farther north than we’ve ever gone before.  Any animals I should be afraid of?”

Kurt sighed.  He just wanted to go inside and pluck the damned goose but those honey eyes were pleading for company and so Kurt sat where he was and began pulling the feathers off the bird there and then.  “Wolves occasionally - but they stay away from us if we stay away from them.  Foxes are pretty much harmless.  So are lynxes and I haven’t seen any of those in awhile.  Someone once had a bad encounter with a wolverine but they were scavenging farther north than usual.  You can pretty much guess who it is….”

“That guy with the scars across his face?”

Kurt nodded, “Yup.  So many stitches and he still looks like the cuts are fresh even though it was a few years ago now.  Moose you actually have to watch out for.”

“Really?”

Kurt nodded again, making a nice conical pile of feathers beside him.  Thankfully there was no wind so he wouldn’t have a problem collecting the feathers to replenish the down in his winter jacket.  “They’re big and ornery.  Don’t get in their way.  If you’re hunting one, make sure you’re going to kill it with one shot.”

“Yah… about that….”  Blaine rubbed the back of his neck in that nervous twitch he had.  “I’ve never hunted before….”

Kurt looked up from the half bald goose corpse, eyeing Blaine incredulously.  “You said you’d hunt to help out.”

“I said I’d try to… I mean… I’ve got this…”  He leaned over and pulled up the leg of his pants, exposing an ankle holster in which a gun was holstered.

“What the hell Blaine?”  Kurt snapped then, gesturing towards the exposed gun.  Suddenly the ammunition he found amount Blaine’s things in the cargo made sense.  “You’re worried about what other people are going to do to you and you have a gun?  You just better be damn glad the community doesn’t know about it.”

“No kidding…” Blaine uttered in a low breath.  “Anyhow.  I could probably shoot something with it…”

“The hell you will.  The noise of a gunshot will scare off all the other animals and I hunt daily.  Keep that thing away.  Save it for The Others.”

Blaine pursed his lips and remained quiet, though nodded to let Kurt knew he understood.  After a moment, Kurt began defeathering the goose again.

“One of the worst issues up here is actually black widow spiders… they bite and you know it.  Had an outbreak of them a couple years ago.”

“Really huh?  The smallest thing causes the biggest problems.  How… metaphorical.”

“Beavers too.  If you get close to one of their dams at a creek, watch out.  Territorial little buggers with big teeth.  Almost severed a guy’s major artery in his leg once.”

Blaine chuckled and nodded again.  “Gotcha.”

“Finally, not a serious health threat, but skunks.  Just leave them alone unless you want to get sprayed.  You already smell homeless anyhow.”

“I needed to make sure my perfume went with my hair and beard.” Blaine quipped back, actually earning him a small smile from Kurt who peeked up when he said it.

“When was the last time you washed yourself?”

Given that Blaine had to stop and think about it, Kurt automatically knew it had been too long and stood up, the completely bald goose in one hand and a handful of feathers in the other.  “You wash yourself tonight or I will serve you an eviction notice.”

Blaine laughed, and it was such a musical sound that Kurt’s heart picked up pace just a little, and then agreed to make sure he smelled better for Kurt’s benefit before Kurt left him and returned to his small sanctuary to cook his meal.

He was still unsure about it, but Kurt actually felt more open to Blaine living beside him.  If it would keep Mike off his case and make him seem less like an outsider to the community, maybe there was value in it, and even if it didn’t do either of those things, at least Blaine was a tolerable neighbour despite his incessant friendliness.


	7. Chapter 6: Music

_**"By means of water, we give life to everything." - Koran, 21:30** _

 

It was Christmas morning and Kurt and his daughter were already sitting on the couch waiting for everyone else to come downstairs so they could open presents.  A beautiful tree sat in front of the window, decorated with lights, tinsel, and ornaments all in blue and silver.  The little girl was squirming in excited anticipation and Kurt had to hold onto her tightly to keep her in place.  He couldn’t hold her forever though, and as soon as Grandpa Burt made an appearance in the doorway she freed herself from Kurt’s arms with a giddy squeal and toddled to Burt who, not missing a beat, leaned down to scoop her up into his arms and spin her around with a happy laugh.  This was already the best Christmas ever and they hadn’t even opened their gifts or had dinner yet.

At least, that’s how Christmas was in Kurt’s dream the night before.  A dream he couldn’t seem to shake off or forget throughout the day.  The image of his dad and a child of his own all in the same room made his heart flutter all day long, and he wasn’t sure why.  It didn’t feel good, but it didn’t feel bad either.  It was just… there.  A persevering image and feeling that that was the way things should look and be.

But instead Kurt was resigned to spending the day following a flock of grouse, picking off the ones he identified as older males after watching them for awhile.  He wanted to ensure this particular group was able to reproduce despite his current hunt so he could track them again one day.  

Then in the evening he patrolled the perimeter of the town as a guard, bow always at the ready despite the fact that he had never had to free his arrows before when he was guarding.  He told himself that letting himself get comfortable and worry free was the way to invite trouble, so he was always on the ready.

By the time he returned home, it was well into the middle of the night and he would only get a few hours of sleep before morning.  No one expected him to be awake with the dawn, however, he needed to make the most of the autumn hunting before the winter set in and limited his ability to leave his hut.

Kurt expected to be able to curl up and just nod off when he did crawl into his bed, lulled to sleep by the crackle of his fire and the muted snores of his new neighbour, but instead the crackling of the fire was accompanied by humming.  He listened for awhile, and could piece together that Blaine was humming a song next door.  He didn’t know the tune,  but it was evident that Blaine was awake enough to be doing it consciously.   The new lullaby put Kurt to sleep easily and, in what had to be a first, he returned to his dream of the night before, watching his daughter and dad open their presents with unmitigated glee.

“Kurt.”

It was his dad speaking to him, but not in his voice.  Kurt looked over at the man in confusion, wondering why his voice had changed.

“Kurt.”

Maybe he had forgotten what his dad’s voice really sounded like.  It had been eight years after all…

“Kurt.”

No.  It was because it was a dream.

Kurt’s eyes slitted apart and focuses slowly on the source of the voice - Blaine.  He bolted up into a sitting position and glared over at the intruder who stood so calmly in his little home, waking him up.

“What are you doing in here?”

Blaine’s shoulders twisted as he shifted in place, “You were… ah… making noises in your sleep…”

Really, Kurt thought to himself, Blaine was complaining that he was making noise in his sleep and for the past week Kurt had accepted the breathy snores being broadcast next door?

“... crying.”

Kurt flinched at that.  He drew a hand up to his face and felt the wetness around his eyes.  He certainly didn’t remember crying, and the dream he had been experiencing… had he been crying in it?  It was already fading from clarity in his mind.

“Are you alright?”

Kurt let his hand drop back to his side and looked back up towards the man hovering beside the door.  Blaine was looking much better rested these days, but despite that, he currently looked like he hadn’t sleep with bloodshot eyes and fresh dark circles hugging the underside of his eyes.

“I could ask you the same.”

Blaine shrugged a little.  “Just… it’s just been hitting home that I’m really away from everything.”

Kurt snorted.  Of all the things to worry about.  “Is that why you were humming lullabies to yourself?”

“Humming….?”  Blaine looked confused for just a moment and then made an o with his lips, “Right.  Yes.  Just was trying to soothe myself to sleep.”

“Well do me a favour and go back to worrying about your sleep and leave me to mine.” Kurt grunted and laid back down, pulling the pelt right up around his neck.

He didn’t look to see Blaine go, but heard the quiet “Good night” and the creak of the door as it was opened and closed when Blaine left.  Moments later the humming picked up and Kurt listened to the lyricless song until he fell asleep again.

Back to Christmas.  Back to helping his little girl open her many presents he had spoiled her with until a warm hand settled on his back and a loving voice, his husband’s, commented on how lucky they all were.  Kurt nodded easily and turned to look up into the eyes of his love.

Sweet, honey eyes.

That was all it took to wake Kurt for a second time, though mercifully, this time the sun was streaming in through cracks of the hut to let him know he was allowed to be awake and not have to suffer through more weird dreams.

As always, he washed and shaved himself with the last of his previous day’s water rations and then went into town to get his fresh ration and breakfast, which he took with him as he went to check on the generators dutifully before patrolling the town until midday.

It was on one of his last rounds around the town that Blaine caught up with him.

“How are you doing?”

Without glancing towards the other man, lest Kurt catch sight of the same eyes that had woken him up in his dreams, he responded, though kept his pace up and his bow still readied.

“I’m fine.  I was fine last night too.  There was no need for you to barge in.”

“Sorry… I just… you sounded like you were being hurt.  I wanted to make sure everything was alright.”

“It was.”

“Okay… hey?”

“What?”

“Why don’t you ever sit down for breakfast or lunch or supper?  I always look for you in the kitchen when everyone else is sitting down to eat but you never come.  I assume you must eat since it doesn’t seem like you’re starving -”

“That a fat joke Blaine?”

“What?!  Oh.  No.  I mean…”

Kurt smirked to himself.  He had managed to catch Blaine off guard with that playful quip, and something about his worried response amused Kurt to no end.

“It was a joke Blaine.  Don’t piss yourself over it.”

That seemed to relieve Blaine as he let out a breath and pulled himself back together as Kurt explained.

“I don’t like to eat with everyone else.  I grab my food to go.”

“Why not?  I mean… why don’t you want to be with everyone else?”

That stilled Kurt.  He stopped in place and Blaine stopped with him.  As he spoke, his heart felt like old wounds were cracking open.

“It’s not so much that I don’t want to be with everyone else… it’s that everyone else doesn’t want to be with me.”

As he said it, Kurt’s eyes caught with those amber eyes that haunted him in his sleep the night before, watching them flit slightly as Blaine tried to process his words with his brow furrowing and lips pursing as he tried to comprehend Kurt.  

“I don’t understand.”

Managing to pry himself loose of the hold of honey eyes, Kurt sighed and turned away, continuing his patrol with Blaine hot on his heels.  “I don’t expect you to.”

“You could eat with me.”

“That’s alright.  Eat with your friends.”

“But… you’re one of my friends.”

The statement irked Kurt, though he tried to maintain his pace and let it seem like it hadn’t affected him at all as he kept his patrol up.  Blaine was clearly an idiot or had a really odd sense of what a friend was.  

“I’m not a friend Blaine.  I live in the same community as you and you’ve imposed being your neighbour on me.”

Silence for a moment, and Kurt dared not look back because he didn’t want to see if the rejection had hurt Blaine, or worse, that it didn’t affect him at all.

“You could still eat with me.  It’s got to be better than being alone all the time.”

His grip around his bow tightened.  Why, why, WHY, was everyone so concerned with his want to be alone and mistaking it for loneliness?  He chose to be alone, not the other way around, so why was it anyone’s business but his own?

“I’m fine Blaine.”

More silence, then Blaine’s voice, quieted now, spoke again.

“Alright.”

Kurt didn’t understand why Blaine didn’t leave him then, but instead his footsteps were echoed by Blaine’s for the last two rounds of his patrol until he saw Noah step out and nod toward him as his relief.  Relaxing his bow and tucking his arrow back into his pouch, he started walking towards his home, and even then, Blaine followed.

“Why are you so insistent on hanging out with me?”

Blaine had to walk quickly to keep up with Kurt, who, after years of practice, was adept at walking fast and had longer legs than Blaine to do so with.  

“Why are you so insistent on getting rid of me?”

“I’m not.  I just don’t understand why you’re wasting your time with me instead of Trent or someone more… accommodating.”

“Trent’s told me to back off a bit, especially since they have that new medic in training there….”

Kitty.  They had selected Kitty as their new medic to train.

“.... and he’s got a crush on her something fierce.  Even if he hadn’t told me to give him space when she’s there, I would have had to back off anyhow because all he does is gush about her and it’s exhausting to listen to.”

Kurt let out a little snort - his best sound for a laugh these days.  “I can imagine.”

“Anyhow, I don’t think you’re as grumpy as you let on.”

“Oh really?”

“No.  You’re not.”

Kurt rolled his eyes, out of view of Blaine.  

“Blaine, with all due respect, you have no idea what I am and no plausible reason to care.”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t care?”

At that, Kurt spun on his heels, causing Blaine to stop short in his tracks as he saw the chestnut haired man lock eyes with him.  

“Why are you pushing this?  Don’t you get it?  I’m not in the market for friends, especially ones limited to spending a season here.”

Blaine’s hands lifted up, palms out, in surrender, “Sorry!  I just… I just care okay?  In general.  About everyone.”

With a huff, Kurt turned and continued his trek to his home.  “Well you shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because we live in a world where people die too easily.  If it’s not The Others, then it’s the struggle for food or resources, or just sicknesses we didn’t worry about ten years ago.”

“Isn’t that more of a reason to care?”

Kurt glanced down at his feet as he walked.  He needed new boots.   Another thing on his mental checklist to take care of.  

Not receiving an answer, Blaine kept talking.  “I get that the world is different from the one we grew up in and the world we expected we’d become adults in… but it’s not that bad either.  It’s how you respond to things that make the difference.  We couldn’t control The Tides, but we can control how we react to them.”

“And how do you react to them oh wise one?” Kurt spat back with all too much sass in his tone.

“I try to be happy… I try to help others… I try to make my time here mean something.”

“How very cliche for someone who’s a member of a group that didn’t want to seem cliche by calling themselves the Wolf pack.”

Blaine chuckled at that.  “I suppose… but I honestly can’t imagine just shutting everyone out like you seem to.”

“My business is my own Blaine.  Why can’t you leave it at that?”

As they reached their homes, Blaine stopped and looked to Kurt as he moved to go inside his home.

“Who died?”

“What?” Kurt stopped and looked back, wide eyed, at Blaine.

“You said that people die too easily…. who was it that died for you?”

Kurt glanced down at the ground.  Even eight years later he still could feel the sadness welling up within him as he thought of his dad, laying there on the ground, while everyone around them was powerless to help him.

“My dad.”

“I’m sorry.”

Kurt shrugged a little, keeping his eyes locked with the dirt below his feet.  “It was eight years ago…. and everyone here has lost people.”

“Doesn’t make it hurt less…”

Damn.  How true that was, and because everyone had lost family and friends in The Tides, no one truly grieved.  There wasn’t time for it and it didn’t make anyone feel more or less special because it was just the fact of this life they all led.  

“Do you like music?”

Kurt’s head snapped up as Blaine posed the question, looking at him with a crooked eyebrow.  How did he go from talking about death to music.

“I… I suppose… but I don’t play anything.  Some of the people in the community play instruments if you want to - “

“I asked if you like it.”

Kurt just nodded then, continuing to appraise Blaine critically as the curly haired man gestured with a finger for him to follow him into his hut, and because Kurt didn’t know how else he could respond, he complied and followed.

Blaine had dressed the place up much more nicely than Kurt had his own home set up.  There was even a picture, hand drawn and rather crude, of a tree pinned up on the wall across from the door.  At some point Blaine must have dragged a real mattress from the community in and covered it with a couple blankets that definitely wouldn’t be sufficient for when the snow came.  His cargo bins and backpacks were neatly lined against the wall opposite his bed, opened and sorted.  

When they entered, Kurt hung in the doorway, watching as Blaine walked deliberately to one of the backpacks and pulled out a familiar looking pouch, pulling from it one of the old cell phones that Kurt had rifled through on Blaine’s first night in town.  He pressed a button, and then a few more, before holding it out to Kurt, who could just hear the faintest of sounds as it got closer to him.

“How…?  The battery…”

“I have a couple little solar power recharging things I found a few years ago… they take forever to charge on them, but it lets me have music - depending on what the owners of the phones liked.”

Kurt held the phone to his ear, and gasped softly as he could hear a melodic voice coming through, accented by instruments synthesized to play along with the voice.  It was beautiful and even though Kurt didn’t know the song or the artist, the sense of nostalgia he felt was overpowering.  This was what he loved to do when he was at home.  Whether he was laying on the floor in his parents room, smelling his mother’s old perfume from her old drawers, or simply doing his homework, he always had music playing.  Hearing it now reminded him of how empty his ears felt all the time.

“The guys think I’m crazy for wasting space in my pack with them… but nothing really means quite as much to me as the music on them…”  Blaine said quietly as he watched Kurt’s reaction to the song playing.  “... I’ve got all the phones set up to extend battery life so I can listen as long as possible without having to recharge… which is a huge pain.”

Kurt’s eyes closed as he kept the phone to his head, appreciating the mournful voice of the man singing.  This particular singer had a powerful voice that was almost ethereal, especially set against the instruments that Kurt was desperately trying to identify.  At least two guitars… a piano… drums…  it seemed like there might be more than that but Kurt was woefully out of practice when it came to identifying the ingredients of music.

“You can borrow it… until the battery dies… if you like.”

Kurt’s eyes cracked open and he nodded to Blaine, backing out the door and walking towards his own home just a few paces away and all the while keeping the phone to his ear.  It didn’t phase him that he had just accepted something of a gift from the man he had just earlier said he was not friends with.  Everything about the music was calming every part of him, and like a drug, he was not about to give it up for anything now that he had it.

That was how the rest of Kurt’s night went.  He laid back in his bed, eyes shut, and just let the music permeate his brain, even when it started repeating the same songs he had heard earlier.  He understood Blaine’s humming now, because once he got the gist of a song, he too began to hum along with it, hearing the voice within him that he hadn’t let out in years.

And though he didn’t mean to, it was how he fell asleep, with music cascading through any and all dreams he had.  He had been starving for song and he didn’t even know it.  His body was eating it up, twitching in sync with the beat and fingers rapping on his stomach as the same tunes embraced him when he awoke in the morning.

He even stayed in bed, for the first time in how long, he didn’t even know.  It wasn’t until a little light flickered on the phone and the music died out abruptly that he got up and began going about his usual routine, with the addition of sneaking into Blaine’s empty home and setting the used phone down on his bed to return it.

His ears instantly ached for more.

“You alright Hummel?”

Karofsky’s voice broke him out of a reverie and as he looked over at the big oaf, who despite years of improving his fitness levels still looked chunky.  Karofsky’s face was lined with bunches where his brow and lips had come together.

“You were singing to yourself…”

Kurt hadn’t even realized he had been doing it, but he could understand why it would strike Karofsky as odd.  In all these years, despite having instruments and dances, Kurt hadn’t sang since his father had died.  Not even so much as a hum.

He choose to shrug it off.  If he didn’t make a big deal of it, then Karofsky couldn’t make it seem like a big deal.

“So?”

“So you never do that.”

Kurt perked up an eyebrow, “And since when do you stalk me to know what I do all the time?”

Karofsky swallowed in a show of discomfort and shook his head, “I don’t.  Geeze.  Nevermind.”

Karofsky may have come out of his closet, but he still distanced himself from what he thought appear to be gay.  Kurt smirked to himself as the much larger man left him alone again, on his patrol, and able to recount the lyrics of one of the songs once more.

“I take it you liked that particular album since you drained the battery overnight.”  Blaine said by way of a greeting when Kurt walked himself into Blaine’s hut without introduction.

“I’ll hunt for you… in exchange for time with them.”

Blaine lifted an eyebrow, setting down the book he had been reading on the side of his mattress on the bed.  The cover was well worn, but Kurt could make the title out as Patience and Sarah.

“Kurt… you don’t have to trade me for - ”

“No.  I do.  Otherwise it’s a gift.”  

Blaine worried his lower lip in between his teeth as he regarded Kurt quietly for a moment while Kurt impatiently stepped in place.  He wanted… no, he NEEDED more music.

“Okay.”

Blaine slipped out of his bed and crept to the bag with his phone collection, pulling a few out and looking them over thoughtfully before placing all but one back in the bag and pressing a few buttons on his choice.  

“If you liked that last one, you should like this one too.”

Kurt took it eagerly and placed it to his ear.  With a sigh of relief he let the powerful voice of a woman fill his head and nodded to Blaine as he left.  Again that night he curled up with the phone and let the music seep into his bones.

Two weeks this went on, with Kurt bringing Blaine small kills each day and teaching him how to cut and prepare the meat so he had his own food source.  He went so far as to take the pelts off some of the rabbits he had trapped for Blaine and stitched them into mittens for him.  All for the privilege of having music in his life again.

There were some artists he quickly grew to love, and others he loathed - though listened to anyhow.  Blaine showed him how he charged the phones - each day leaving a couple charging with the small solar panels pointed to the heavens to absorb the little daylight they were getting - and less each and every day for that matter as winter drew closer.

“Do you think maybe Matthew Bellamy was a little prophetic with that album?” Blaine asked of Kurt one evening as they worked together to chop firewood, a phone playing on a stump between them.

“Why?” Kurt asked before heaving his axe downward to split a piece of wood evenly into two. “Because he’s singing about an unjustifiable war after talking about corrupt governments?”

Blaine shrugged, picking up a stack of cut logs and piling them up alongside his shack.  “There’s a lot of lyrics about new world orders and missing those you love and -”

“That’s true of most songs Blaine.  It sells.”

“New world order songs sell?”

“No.  Love.”

“Ah.”  Blaine said with a grin criss-crossing his features and Kurt peeked up at him from where he was readying another log to be sliced.  

“Ah what?  You’ve got a shit eating grin on your face.”

“I don’t know.  It just strikes me as rather amusing that you, Mr. Frigid, would think that love sells.”

Kurt clucked his tongue up against the top of his mouth to make a tsking noise as he chopped the log while Blaine watched on.  “Prostitution is the world’s oldest occupation.  I don’t need to be in the business of it though to know it’ll always have a market.”

“Touche.”  Blaine carefully darted around Kurt, picking up the pieces of timber he had cut to pile up in his stack so Kurt could continue his chopping without having to move.  “Even out here though, in the utopia of this new world, is there prostitution?”

Kurt snickered a little at the question and nodded once, “Let’s just say I’ve been approached a couple times by ladies looking to trade time in bed for meat.”

He didn’t miss it when Blaine’s nose wrinkled up in that way that he had learned meant Blaine was thinking about something disdainful.  

“No.  I didn’t take them up on the offer.”

That seemed to relieve Blaine, though Kurt wasn’t quite sure why.  Since spending more time together, Blaine had told him about how some of the Warbler’s had a woman in each of the communities they visited and with his sunny disposition and a body like Blaine’s, Kurt was sure he could get his choice of women.  Maybe Blaine was just more of a god fearing man than he let on.

“So what’s on the playlist for tonight than Kurt?  Muse?  Adele?  Micheal Jackson?”

Kurt set his axe pointy side down on the stump and propped his head up on the end of the shaft, buffered by his hands holding the axe in place.  “Hmm…”  He couldn’t really go wrong any which way - so long as it wasn’t the screamo stuff he had tried to sleep to one night.  That was a one time listen only.

Thoughts were interrupted though by a call from across the field and a figure running towards them.  Kurt squinted to try and make out who it was, but he recognized the voice before he recognized the face.  Brittany.

“Guys!  Beth!  In a tree!”  She huffed as she got closer to them, setting her hands on her knees as she puffed and caught her breath.  Brittany was typically in good shape, but somehow, and Kurt didn’t want to know how, she was in her second trimester of pregnancy with what Santana was calling their baby.  Short of magic, there was no way only Santana and Brittany were involved in making that baby.

Blaine was quick to reach over and help Brittany support herself before she lifted her head and expounded on her quick comments from before.  “Beth climbed up a tree.  Quinn’s gone hunting and Noah’s off on a scavenging mission.  It’s so tall.  We can’t get her down and the kids are saying she’s been up there for hours on a dare.”

“Oh for….” Kurt swore under his breath, lifted his axe, and slammed it into the stump to let it stay there.  “Take me there Brit.”

She led them both there, to a spruce which had aptly been nicknamed the Giant Tree.  The children of school age were encircled around the tree, looking upwards along with Rachel and Finn who were calling up to Beth’s small, huddled form near the highest branches of the tree.

“Why hasn’t anyone climbed up there?” Kurt demanded as he came up to the other adults.

“Finn tried but he’s too big and can’t slip through the spaces in the branches and I kept losing my grip…”

Kurt sighed and looked up the tree.  He’d have to come up with some kind of plan to get her down, and quickly.  Even from so far away he could see she was shivering and crying despite her classmates words of encouragement being called up to her.

“Okay… first of all, someone go get the medic on duty.  Brit said she’s been up there for… hours?”  He looked to Rachel who nodded apologetically and tried to explain but Kurt cut her off before she had the chance to, “So she’s probably cold and getting sick, if she’s not sick already.  Now we’re going to have to get some saw’s and trim the pine off the branches as we climb up otherwise we won’t fit and we’ll get all cut up and -”

“Look!  Ear necklace guy is going up!” One of the children called out.  Kurt snapped his head around and followed the pointing fingers of several of the children to where Blaine was already hugging himself around the trunk of the tree and shimmying through the pine needles to work his way upwards.

“Someone just go get the medic…” Kurt muttered and without direction, Finn ran off to comply while Kurt kept his gaze set on Blaine as he worked his way up the tree.

With Blaine’s ascension, everyone held their breath and just watched until he made it up to where Beth was.  They could see that words were exchanged between the two before Beth crawled towards Blaine and climbed onto his back where she locked her arms around his neck as he slowly moved back down the tree.

Mike ran up, alongside Finn, when Blaine reached the bottom to a chorus of cheering from the schoolchildren who then had to be pushed back by Rachel so Mike could have some space to check her over as Blaine carefully settled her on the ground in front of him.  The curly haired man was all scratched up, courtesy of the spruce needles and bark of the tree, but otherwise looked no worse for wear.  Beth on the other hand was pale and shivering, still sobbing, and also cut and scraped all over the place.

“Now explain to me… why the hell she was alone in a tree for hours.” Kurt snarled towards Rachel.

“Quinn said she was staying home sick today… she had.. or has a flu or something… Quinn had to leave to hunt for a bit while Beth was napping and, according to the kids, Beth got up and decided to go play with the other kids and was dared to go up the tree…. and then they went back to class when she made it to the top.  Afterschool one of them came here and saw she was still up there…”

“You really need to start teaching these kids about not being idiots.” Kurt muttered back.  

Rachel didn’t bother with a reply to the statement, instead hovering over Mike to see how Beth was doing.  Finn was trying, and failing at, sending the other children home - at least until Brittany promised them all some cake and led them off to the kitchen.

“Geeze… I’m going to pulling those needles out of all corners of me for days…” Blaine muttered, causing Kurt to look over and see that he was indeed plucking spruce needles out of his coat and pants, which had him resembling a porcupine with how many of them were hanging onto him.

“You need to come to the clinic Miss Beth.”  Mike said, setting down the stethoscope he had been using to check her lungs.  Without prompting Blaine stepped over and scooped the girl up into his arms, letting Mike lead the way back to the town and to the clinic.  The whole time Beth cried into Blaine’s shoulder, calling out for her mommy and daddy.

Kurt followed, but kept his distance.  Rachel announced she would see if there was any progress in finding Quinn and left them.  When Beth had been bundled in blankets on a bed and Mike continued to check her vital signs to determine the next steps for treatment, Blaine stepped over to Kurt.

“Why did they come to you for help?”

Kurt thought of making a snarky remark back, questioning what Blaine thought of his capabilities in rescue, but decided against it.  Blaine had just saved the girl after all and even carried her sick little body back here without question.

“I used to babysit Beth quite a bit when she was younger and Noah and Quinn both had to work… for whatever reason she attached herself to me.  Must have been my pleasant disposition.”  He added in that last statement, coated in pure sarcasm, because he knew that Noah and Quinn would have rather Beth attached herself to one of their own close friends.  It had been fluke that she had stopped her colicy crying when Kurt had held her one evening, and had always been calm for him when she was for no one else.  He didn’t understand it any better than they had, but they had certainly utilized that secret power of his as she grew up.

“I didn’t take you for the kid type.” Blaine said, continuing to try and rid himself of spruce needles one by one.

“I’m not.”

“Clearly you are.” Blaine retorted, playfully flicking a needle at Kurt who wrinkled up his nose disdainfully.

Mike came out of Beth’s room then and both Kurt and Blaine looked attentively towards him.

“She’s got a mild case of hypothermia, and is sick with someone, but I won’t be able to tell until I get her temperature back up.  Kitty is getting her undressed now to put in the bath.  You mind going to get her some warmed milk and other hot foods to help her out?”

“On it!” Blaine stated and immediately rushed out before Kurt even had a chance to open his mouth, earning a chuckle from Mike.

“Hero of the day that one.”

Kurt snorted and rolled his eyes.  “Right.”

“Might be competition for you for Beth’s affections.” Mike continued to tease.

“He can have her.”

“You don’t mean that…”

Kurt huffed and sat himself down on the bench in the makeshift lobby.  “I do.  I’m not a kid person.  Hell.  I’m not even an adult person.”

“Only because you choose not to let people in….”

“Don’t start your psychobabble bullshit on me Mike.  Take care of Beth.  She’s the one who needs attention.”

Mike let out a short, sad sigh and nodded, returning to Beth’s room.  For awhile, Kurt sat there, in silence, wondering why in hell he was still even there since Beth was being taken care of and he wanted to avoid catching whatever she was sick with.

“Kurt…”

He looked up then, seeing Trent in the doorway of his room, using crutches and the doorframe to keep himself upright.

“Well look at you….”

Trent smiled weakly.  It had clearly been an effort to hobble over to the door he was in and he was puffing in exhaustion.  

“Yah.  Look at me.  Regular Olympic champion.”

“You’re probably better than expected…”

“Only because I have the right motivation.”

“Kitty?” Kurt said with a smirk.

A blush rose in Trent’s cheeks and he just made a small nod before heaving himself over to sit by Kurt, each movement deliberate and requiring him to take in a deep breath.

“I wanted to thank you though.”

Kurt arched an eyebrow, “You already did - and I told you, any one of us could have picked up that call.”

Trent shook his head, “No.  I wanted to thank you for letting Blaine occupy space by you.  He told me you weren’t exactly keen on the idea and now he has someone else besides me to hang out with…”

“I would hardly qualify me as someone Blaine hangs out with.” Kurt grumbled, turning his head away from looking at Trent’s bad leg.  It was covered with a baggy pant leg, but still obviously warped out of position and Trent was focused on moving it so it was stretched out at a better angle while he sat.

“Still.  He’s our social butterfly and he’s always had a circle of people to talk and interact with, so it means a lot for him to have someone else to talk to here.  A lot of people have been really cold to him since they found our ear chains.”

“In their defense, they’ve never seen one before and it is just… insanely weird.”

“You seem alright with it though.”

Kurt shrugged.  He hadn’t really thought about it to be honest.  “I only have myself to worry about.  If I had kids or a pair or something I might be worried about protecting them and what that ear chain really meant about the owner.”

“Blaine’s a good guy.  He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Yes he has a necklace of Other’s ears.”

“You have to in order to trade with renegades….”

“So I’ve been told.”

The conversation stopped there as Blaine came back in, holding a tray with a mug of something steaming and a piece of flat bread with stew spreading out over top of it.  “Dinner is ready for the little princess.”

“Come right in!” Mike bellowed from the room he was in, and Blaine bustled past Trent and Kurt with a smile and nod in their direction as he went to serve up the meal.

“He’s a regular boy scout.” Kurt grumbled.

For whatever reason, that made Trent chuckle, and they were quiet again until Blaine left the room, empty handed now.

“They’ve got her in the tub and she seems to be a bit better.  Not crying anymore anyhow.” Blaine said as he stood before them.

“Good.  Back to work then.” Kurt said with a grunt as he stood up and placed his hands at the small of his back to stretch it out.  At some point he had become sore there, no doubt due to the lackluster support the benches in the clinic offered.

“You’re just going to go and leave her?” Blaine asked of Kurt then, looking completely agast.

“I can’t do anything more for her that they won’t.  I imagine Quinn showing up is just a matter of time now, and I have a patrol to get to.  Plus she’s sick.  I am not getting myself sick.”

Trent and Blaine exchanged looks, which Kurt ignored as he walked out and returned to the shack to collect his bow and arrows before starting on his patrol for the evening.  As he walked back into town, he heard Quinn shrieking from within the clinic, demanding to know how Beth was to whichever unfortunate individual was in there with her.  He had half a mind to go in there and demand to know why she had left Beth when the kid was sick, but no doubt part of her freak out was due to the guilt she must have been experiencing then since she had made that mistake.

At least, he knew he’d be feeling terribly guilty had he done the same.

Word spread quickly in the little community and Kurt was asked several times if it was true that Blaine had ascended the tree to save Beth.  Of course he had to admit that Blaine had done exactly that, though he thought he was getting entirely too much credit.  Had Kurt had a little more time he would have been the one being spoken about.

But then, Kurt wasn’t terribly impetuous to begin with.

He was on patrol on the streets when he saw Blaine being chatted up by a couple younger women who were giggling and clearly, even from down the street, flirting with Blaine who seemed to take it all in stride with that face consuming grin of his.  Oh well.  Better Blaine had saved Beth then because such gestures from young women would have been wasted on Kurt.  

It didn’t stop Blaine from waving towards Kurt though when he passed, and Kurt nodded to him in return, getting a look of irritation from the girls as they were the cause of their interruption with the communities newest, and now most popular, member.  Blaine surely wouldn’t have a hard time finding people to talk and eat with now and Kurt could bet that he’d be forgotten soon enough.

At least he wouldn’t have to tiptoe when he went to take a piss in the middle of the night anymore.

Blaine was home however when Kurt got off shift, and leaned back against the side of Kurt’s hut, which looked like it could barely hold his weight up.  He half expected it to fall under the slight pressure from Blaine.

“No hot date tonight?” Kurt mused as he got close enough to his shack.

Blaine laughed at that and shook his head, holding out a phone to Kurt who slung his bow over his shoulder so he could take it in his hand, recognizing this phone for the music within it.  “Pop mix tonight hmm?”

“Beth’s good by the way.”  Blaine said as he stood upright and removed his weight from the shanty.  “Mike’s keeping her overnight for observation but they got her temperature back up and her flu should just run its course over the next couple days.”

Kurt nodded, closing his fingers around the phone as he drew his arm to his side.  He knew it wasn’t Blaine’s intention, but hearing the update from Blaine instead of waiting to find out for himself made him flood with guilt.  He should have stayed and waited for an update from Mike.  

“Hey…”  Blaine’s hand found it’s way to Kurt’s shoulder.  He immediately tensed up under the unfamiliar touch and looked in panic at the hand on him.  Blaine removed it right away, seeing the change in Kurt.

“... sorry.  Anyhow.  She’s fine.  Don’t worry.”

Kurt nodded to him, letting the relief seep in as well as relaxing once Blaine’s hand was off him.  He was rarely touched, and then only if he knew it was coming - like a physical examination or a hug from Brittany or Beth.  

“You should visit her tomorrow though.  She asked for you.”

Kurt looked up then, scanning Blaine’s eyes for sincerity, “She did?”

Blaine nodded, “Yes… she said you tell her the best stories to help her get to sleep.”

That made Kurt chuckle involuntarily.  “It’s been well over a year since I watched her last… almost two years actually.  I can’t believe she remembers that.”

“She’s a sweet kid.  Did a stupid thing, but sweet nonetheless.  Man is her mom upset though.”

“Quinn?  Yah.  I heard her screaming in the clinic earlier.  Probably just…”

“Guilt.” Blaine finished off for Kurt.  They nodded together, understanding in tandem.

“Anyhow.  Have a good night Kurt.” Blaine said softly before heading into his own home.

With the music, and the knowledge that the little girl that wasn’t really his was okay, he was able to sleep, even when honey eyes permeated his dreams once again.  
  
  
  
  



	8. Chapter 7: Sick

 

**_"When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water." - Benjamin Franklin_ **

Winter came overnight in a flurry of snow and fast winds.  Kurt had to tie his door back to stop it from slamming open and shut, yelling through the cracks in his walls for Blaine to do the same.  When morning came, Kurt no longer could walk on the ground outside without it crunching underfoot.  His breaths came out in misty puffs that hung around his face and tickled under his nose.  

He did go to visit Beth at the clinic, who insisted that he tell her a story like he used to - about things that used to happen before the Tides.  Most of Kurt’s stories were stolen plots from the movies he used to love, but he managed to tie in so much detail that Beth hung onto every word.  Her fever had gone down overnight, and even though Mike said she was past the worst of things, Kurt still sat across the room while telling her the story.  He was not getting sick no matter how much she batted her eyelashes at him.

He had a midday shift which had him patrolling through the town.  With the sudden onslaught of snow, most people were scrambling to get winter wear out or trade for new winter items so the trading hub was quite busy.  Kurt expected that Blaine might try to trade some of the rabbit and gophers that Kurt had caught for him in exchange for music time, but he must have been somewhere else because on each round through, Kurt couldn’t find Blaine’s face among those vying for new mitts and boots and hats.

Because he went on so many scavenging trips, Kurt already had winter gear, although most of it needed mending to some degree.  He didn’t worry about trading though for what needed fixing because he was one of the few people who was willing to go scavenging in the winter and could find what he needed on one of those trips.

It was as he was finishing up his shift and walking past the clinic that he saw Quinn holding Beth by the hand and walking out, blankets wrapped around both their shoulders as pseudo coats.  Quinn quirked a finger at Kurt and he walked over to her.  

“Glad to see she’s out.”

Quinn nodded in agreement.  “Trent asked if you’d stop by.”

Kurt thanked her for letting him know and walking into the clinic, greeting Carole on the way and then walking back into Trent’s room where he was cozied up in the bed there.

“Hey Kurt.”

“Hey Trent.  What’s up?”

Trent didn’t waste time.  “I haven’t seen Blaine today.  I was wondering if you have and he’s just busy with something.  It’s not like him not to visit me to the point of my needing to boot him out… proverbially speaking of course.”

Kurt slowly shook his head, and had to agree. Blaine visited Trent for long hours, almost all the time.  Lacking a job or any other real purpose around here other than caring for Trent had allowed him to keep his own hours, and most of those were kept at the clinic.

“I’ll check his hut.”

Trent thanked Kurt and asked to let him know if he found anything out before Kurt left and headed straight home.

He didn’t need to enter Blaine’s hut to know where Blaine was.  A succession of hard coughs could be heard as Kurt approached the hut such that Kurt opted against opening the door to peer inside.

“You okay Blaine?”

From within Blaine made a groan and nothing else.  Kurt hovered on the other side of the door for a minute, juggling the thought around of going inside before turning around and go straight back to the clinic.  He let Trent know and within a half hour was back outside Blaine’s hut while Carole tended to him inside.

When she emerged she nodded towards Kurt, “Looks like he has what Beth was getting over.  He’ll need lots of rest and fluids.”

“Okay.  I’ll show Kitty where to go when it’s her turn on shift -”

“Oh no sweetie.  We have three people in the last stages of cancer and two babies that are overdue.   This cold snap has brought a few people in already with mild frostbite and he’s hardly the only one with the flu.  You need to take care of him since you’re all the way out here.”

Kurt’s jaw fell and his eyes bulged as he looked at Carole.  No.  There was no way.

She dug around in her purse and held out a small bottle and a blue little tub to him.  “Fever reducer and some mentholated rub for his chest and back to help with the coughing.”

“No Carole… no… he’s sick.  I can’t.  I’ll get sick.”  Kurt shook his head.

The corner of her mouth quirked up in a half smile as she looked over Kurt and then reached into her bag, pulling out a face mask to hold out with the rest of the offerings.  “There.  No worries.”

Again he looked at her with clear disbelief in his eyes and face.  She had to be joking.  He was not nursing that man in there.  Not a chance. He couldn’t risk getting ill.

But she pushed the items into his hands regardless and made off before he could argue it any further.  He looked down at the things in his hands and shuddered at the thought of going into what was now a den of illness with Blaine hacking away in there.  

However, it’s not like she left him with a choice.

He took the things to his hut first and dropped them on the bed while he boiled some water over the coals of his firepit and then mixed it with some local flora to make a tea which he let sit while he suited up.  The face mask was put on, a toque over his ears and forehead, and an extra jacket over top.  Two layers of gloves - just in case, and ear muffs, because who knew how strong that virus was.  

When he was geared up, he made his way to Blaine’s, medicine in his pocket and a mug of tea in his hands.  He planned to donate the mug to Blaine after this because there was no way he was going to use it again.  It had started snowing again this evening, the wind whipping the snowflakes around like tiny daggers which got caught in his eyelashes on the brief walk over.  Blaine couldn’t have picked a more inconvenient time of year to get ill.

Blaine was bundled under his too thin blankets when Kurt made his way in, murmuring to himself as he snuggled a phone that was playing a tune too faint for Kurt to hear unless he got closer - which he didn’t plan on doing.  He tried calling out to Blaine to announce his arrival but all that served to do was cause Blaine to cough again and again and again while Kurt kept his back against the wall opposite to Blaine, holding the tea in his hands and wondering how Mike and Kitty were choosing to deal with this kind of stuff on a regular basis.

Eventually though, Kurt talked himself into getting closer to Blaine until he was right at his bedside.  With one gloved hand he gently nudged Blaine’s side.

“Hey.  Blaine.  I have tea.”

Blaine was pale, which said quite a bit given how tan his natural colouring was.  His curly hair was matted in sweaty clumps to his forehead and he kept sniffing for air as if his oxygen was limited.  When his side was nudged, his eyelashes fluttered over the dark circles where his eyes were sunken before slitting apart and looking at Kurt curiously.

“‘m sick….”

“Yes.  I got that.” Kurt hummed as he set the tea down on the floor beside him and reached into his pocket to get out the mentholated rub.  May as well get it out of the way.

As he was unscrewing the lid though, Blaine began to cough again, though this time it sounded like his cough was coming from his stomach - so deep and so consuming that Blaine was rolling over towards Kurt until he realized too late what that sound meant.

With a loud retch, Kurt was sprayed such that he froze in place and shuddered in mortification.  Blaine had vomited all over him and beyond before letting his head fall over the edge of the bed where he continued to puke residual bile there, though it seemed that Kurt had gotten the worst of it.

Kurt only let himself remain solid for a moment though as two things became clear quickly.  One was that the vomit was seeping through his clothing quickly and already kissing the skin underneath, and the other was that the smell of the puke was affecting his own gag reflex.  Forgetting Blaine for the moment, he rushed back out of the hut and started shucking his clothing off in what had to be a record for undressing in rapid time.  He didn’t care if anyone was around to see him, not that anyone was, all he cared about was getting those illness drenched clothes off him.  He knew instantly that he wasn’t even going to bother washing them and they were going to be burned as soon as he could.  For now though, he just needed to get himself clean.

With the wind biting all his exposed skin, he ran into his own shanty and put the last of his daily water ration on to boil while he rubbed dry soap all over himself, washing it off with scaldingly hot water once it was ready.  Kurt redressed himself, noting now that he definitely needed new winter gear and would be on the next scavenging mission whether he liked it or not, and then headed back for Blaine’s.

The smell inside was overpowering, and Kurt kept his hand over his mouth and nose to block it out so he wouldn’t be forced to add to it.  Blaine was where he had left him, though was no longer hurling.  The effort seemed to have exhausted him though and one hand and his head hung off the side of the bed where he had collapsed.

“Fuck…”

Short of a disinfectant miracle occurring, Kurt knew he couldn’t leave Blaine in here.  It was disgusting and reeked.  Somehow he’d have to get Blaine out and over to his own place and have to risk more vomit there.  He could have left him, but that voice of his dad in the back of his head was reminding him that no one ever left his mother when she was sick, and so he shouldn’t do the same to anyone else - no matter how gross it was.

Deciding this outfit would also have to be a write off, Kurt stepped carefully over to the bed, mindful of not stepping in any of the puddles around Blaine.  He pushed Blaine back gently so he was again laying on his back.  It didn’t take any effort.  Blaine was exceedingly pliant and totally unresponsive.  

Then came the part that Kurt wasn’t as sure about.  He slipped a hand under Blaine’s back and another under his knees and lifted, surprised to find out that he could lift the other man who only made a small whimper to suggest he was still alive.

This was how Kurt carried Blaine out of the hut and laid him down outside.  Blaine’s own clothing was removed piece by piece and added to the pile of Kurt’s rejected clothes until Blaine too was shivering in the cold, completely nude, before Kurt once again picked him up and this time brought him into his own hut.

After Blaine had been laid down, Kurt went back outside to gather snow to melt and boil so he could wash Blaine down as well, which was done as quickly as he could manage.  The fact that Blaine’s sleeping body was reacting to Kurt’s innocent touches did not help Kurt’s focus, and his mind kept blaring an alarm to the tune of ‘This is the first time you’ve ever gotten to touch a naked man!’. Between the disgust of having to deal with vomit, and the bashfulness he felt about his first touching of another man being due to said vomit, Kurt didn’t want to dwell too much on how perfectly formed Blaine was from top to bottom, nor did he want anyone to ever accuse him of taking advantage of the situation so he kept his eyes averted and completed the task as fast as he could.

Once that was complete, he dressed Blaine in what was little he had left to wear and covered him with pelts.  Eventually he’d have to return to that stinky hellhole next door to retrieve the rub, but Kurt figured that could wait given everything he had just done.

He stayed awake that night, listening to the wind pick up in speed and whistle loudly outside, and listening to Blaine’s cough with a pot at the ready to catch any more vomit if it came.  Periodically he changed a cool cloth he had applied to Blaine’s forehead to help with the fever, and tried to get Blaine to sip some melted snow water with little success.  It wasn’t until morning that Blaine regained any consciousness.

“‘ere ‘m I?”

Kurt looked up from where he was reading beside his firepit.  Blaine was turning his head slowly and his eyes were only slivered open as he looked around.  

“You made a mess of your place so I had to bring you to mine.”

When Kurt spoke, Blaine’s eyes found him and regarded him quietly through his lashes.  “‘m sorry.”

“You should be.”

Blaine let out a little sigh and it took Kurt a minute to realize he had fallen back asleep already.  Did he really think chastising a sick man would do him any good?  

While Blaine slept, Kurt took the initiative to do something he had been dreaming about for a couple weeks now, deciding to deal with any potential fallout later.

He cut off Blaine’s beard and trimmed his hair.

He really hoped Blaine would be alright with it, because the last thing he needed would be to be accused of using Blaine’s weakened state to make the man more appealing, but honestly, he had opened up his germ free home to Blaine in his sickly state and Kurt could argue that having less fur all over his head would make it less likely for germs to catch and stay with Blaine.  That had to make some sense right?

Blaine didn’t argue though, at least not since he was completely out of it while Kurt carefully trimmed his curls so they bobbed around his chin and then did the same to his beard before using up his razors to shave the man’s face clean.

It was a startling difference.  It took years off of Blaine and made him look as young as he acted.  Under all that fuzz was a baby face and red lips that Kurt realized matched the colour of the head of…. well… the thought made Kurt blush.

Even if Kurt had wanted to leave for the day, to hunt or work or get food, the weather was not cooperating.  The day only got colder from the night before and the wind would not let up.  He was lucky he had some rabbit from the day before because he was able to make a meager stew with it.  Kurt would have to try to get Blaine to eat at some point - assuming he ever woke up from his feverish coma - and drink more than a few sips at a time.

A nap took Kurt over at midday and he slept hunched against the side of his hut where he had been rereading one of his books.  When he awoke, he saw honey eyes looking back at him from the bed.

“‘m sorry…”

“You said that already.” Kurt responded with a yawn, stretching his arms out over his head as he went through his own motions of waking. “If you’re awake though, you need to get some food in you, or at least more to drink.”

He helped Blaine sit up, watching worriedly as Blaine realized his face felt different and placed a hand up to feel the skin that had been hidden under all that facial hair while he poured some melted snow water for Blaine to drink from one of his cups.

“You shaved me.”

Kurt nodded and dove right into justifying it, “You were covered in your own vomit and snot and sweat and it was the only way to make sure it was all gone.”

Blaine then looked down at himself, and had he not already been flushed with fever, he would have blushed.

“You washed and changed me….”

Kurt glanced away with that, looking at the fire and forcing himself to appear apathetic, “You definitely needed it.”

“Thanks.”

Internally, Kurt sighed in relief, though he didn’t show it outwardly as he helped Blaine drink, holding the cup to his mouth and tipping it back for him since Blaine was still shivering involuntarily at random intervals.

“Think you can manage food?  If you puke again, I warn you, I don’t have enough clothing left for the both of us at this point.”

Blaine’s eyes grew wider as Kurt said it.  “I puked on you?”

Of course he didn’t remember.  He would be so lucky.

“Yes.  All over your place too - which is why you’re here.”

“Sorry….”

Blaine truly looked sorry as he said it, eyes glancing down at his lap in pure shame, avoiding looking back to Kurt.  Like a puppy caught chewing a shoe Kurt thought to himself and shook his head.  There was no way he could be mad at Blaine for it.

“It’s alright.  It happens.”

The rest of Blaine’s period of wakefulness before he went to nap again was spent with Kurt trying to spoon feed him little bits of the stew he had made and then forcing him to swallow a pill for his fever.  Blaine’s face was rewashed to cleanse it of sweat and Kurt even braved the blizzard outside and the stink of Blaine’s hut to retrieve the rub so he could apply it to Blaine’s chest and back for him.

“You’d make a good doctor….” Blaine mumbled as Kurt rubbed the ointment across Blaine’s back.

“I don’t think I could deal with getting puked on on a regular basis.” Kurt admitted, earning a small chuckle from Blaine though it immediately spiralled into a cough.

Before his nap, Blaine thanked Kurt no less than five more times and apologized another three times.  It made Kurt feel guilty for being upset with Blaine for puking on him earlier, recognizing that Blaine was blameless in the matter.  He had probably caught this bug from Beth, after all, when he had rescued her.

Kurt slept fitfully, curled up on the floor by the firepit.  Even though his hands had been on Blaine, he washed them thoroughly every time he had to touch him.  He wasn’t going to just let that flu walk into him by sharing a bed with Blaine, however innocent his intentions might have been.

And, of course, the blizzard kept up.  The next day Kurt had to brave the cold by layering himself with the remainder of his clothes so he could could get food for himself and Blaine as well as check in with the clinic to let Trent know how things were going and see if there was anything more he could do.

“Sounds like you’re doing quite well Kurt.  Good job.”

He tried not to roll his eyes as Mike said it, even though the words seemed patronizing.   

When he made it back, Blaine was sitting up and holding a mug of water with both hands, trying to keep them steady as he drank.  In a flash, Kurt set down what he had gathered from town and was at Blaine’s side to help support the cup so Blaine could drink.

“How’re you feeling?”

Blaine shrugged his shoulders a little, “Pathetic… feeble… achey…”

“So better?”

“Yes.”

They didn’t share much more in terms of words.  Blaine’s throat was sore on top of everything else that was wrong with him, and he wasn’t able to keep himself conscious for long enough to hold a conversation anyhow.  Kurt spent most of the time reacquainting himself with Margaret Atwood.

By the third day though, there was a break in the blizzard and in Blaine’s fever.  His appetite came back in full force and made up for the days where he only drank water and sipped tiny bits of stew.  Kurt even had to make a run into town to get more for Blaine to eat, even though he insisted on only giving Blaine a little bit at a time to avoid overfilling his stomach and causing a return of the vomit.  The best news was that Blaine was able to go outside to relieve himself on his own.  The past few days had forced Kurt to form an iron stomach as he helped Blaine out and in every time he needed to do his business and there was absolutely nothing special about helping another man out in that regard.  Even though Kurt wasn’t right beside Blaine for that, he still hung out a few paces away to help Blaine when he was ready to return and some of the sounds and smells that came out of that man were nothing short of disgusting.

“You don’t have to kill things for me you know… after all this…” Blaine swept his hands out to indicate the whole of Kurt’s home which had been opened up to him on one particular afternoon.  “... I would have let you borrow the phones before without anything, and I definitely won’t accept anything in return after this.”

“Oh I’m definitely going to be borrowing your music without trade now.  Furthermore, you’ll be coming on a scavenging mission with me when you’re all better because I need a whole new wardrobe after your projectile puking.” Kurt stated with a chuckle to let Blaine know the incident was in the past now, and something they could laugh over.  Besides, Blaine would need more clothing too to get through the winter.

“That’d be good actually… I need to be able to contribute more.  I don’t know how much more credit that food I brought will get me and Trent and, given the weather out here, I don’t want to have us without food options.”

“We’d never let anyone starve.” Kurt insisted.  

“I know… I just made a promise and I intend to keep it to the best of my ability.”

Once the blizzard weather had tapered off, the snow still clung to the ground, but it was mild enough to tolerate for more than just quick runs back and forth to town.  Kurt was used to it, given that winter in the region lasted almost half the calendar year, and since he was a loner, had no problem keeping himself occupied with his books, stitching together new items from pelts, and making arrows for his bow.  Blaine on the other hand, quickly became stir crazy.

“Do you have any board games we could play?”

“No.”

“What about paper and pens?  We could play tic-tac-toe or -”

“No.”

“Well how about - “

“No.”

Blaine sighed in exasperation and laid back on the bed where he had been sitting up watching Kurt read the same book for two days in a row.  Kurt knew his books inside and out before he donated them to the community library and picked up new ones from scavenging.  

“If you’re bored I picked up a bottle of cider vinegar from the kitchen staff to help with your home.”

Blaine turned his head so he was looking towards Kurt.  “What is vinegar going to do for my place?”

Kurt smirked a little.  “Cleaning.  Closest we have to disinfectant here.”

Blaine wrinkled up his nose.  He hadn’t been back to his place since Kurt brought him in and had questioned how bad his vomiting incident had really been, at least until he saw the pile of clothing scheduled for burning outside.  

“It’s alright, “ Kurt noted, deciding to spare Blaine the thought.  “I took care of it when you were napping.”

“You didn’t have to do that…” Blaine’s voice trailed off into a whisper as he looked at Kurt who was beginning to get uncomfortable with just how much Blaine watched him.  Not that there was all that much to do being stuck in bed while recovering, but Kurt didn’t see why he was so interesting that Blaine’s eyes were so set on him.

“It’s alright.  Kept me busy and there was nothing in my traps this morning when I checked so I needed something to do since I didn’t have any furs or feathers to take care of.”

“But still… it’s gross.  You shouldn’t have to do it.”

“I already did Blaine.  Don’t worry about it.  You sure you don’t want me to read to you?”

Blaine shook his head just a bit.  The fever was gone but he was still plagued by aches all over his body and he had discovered that shaking and nodding his head as he would have usually made his brain feel like it was being slapped against his skull, so every movement was done carefully.  “You read it all to me yesterday and I didn’t like the way it ended and the guy was a jerk.”

Kurt chuckled and looked back at the pages in front of him.  Blaine wasn’t wrong, but he was going to have to learn to be less choosy about how to spend his time, especially when things got REALLY cold.

“What if I told you stories?”

Kurt glanced back up over the edge of the book, his eyes caught back on Blaine’s.  “What do you mean?”

“Unless you’re not interested… but I could tell you about places I’ve been and people I’ve met.  Maybe I’ve met someone you’re related to or something.”

“Not possible.”

Blaine used his elbows and arms to push himself back up to sitting, though never lost sight of Kurt’s face as he did.  “Everyone asks when we travel community to community if we’ve met up with certain people…. even now, so long after the fact.”

“My family is all dead Blaine.  It would be pretty pointless for me to ask about ghosts.”

Blaine’s lower lip caught in his teeth and Kurt quickly tsked him for it.  “Don’t chew up your lip.  It’ll get chapped in the cold if you do that.”

The teeth released Blaine’s lower lip, but the apologetic look remained.  “Are you sure they’re dead or are you assuming they are because -”

“No.  One hundred percent sure.  I’m not one of those who lost contact with family when The Tides began.  I know for sure what happened.”

“Oh.”

Kurt sighed and set the book down on the ground open to the page he was on for later.   Clearly Blaine was not going to let him read - whether it was for questioning him or just making him feel his presence with those honey eyes drilling into him constantly.  “What about you?”

Blaine made a weak attempt at a smile, “My parents were in New York City when it happened… so they’re probably not around anymore, and my older brother was in Los Angeles, so… the same probably for him… but I still have a bit of hope that they might have escaped and I’ll run into them one day.”

When Kurt heard things like that, he was honestly a little glad that his dad had died in front of him because at least he knew for sure what had happened to him.  He didn’t have to wonder like so many others did and ask every newcomer if they’d met up with certain people.  Chances were likely that Blaine’s family was all dead, since New York City and Los Angeles were both coastal cities that had been taken right at the beginning of the Tides.  He’d never heard of any survivors from them at the very least.

“And you?”

“I was setting up my room at my new boarding school when we first got word.  At first everyone thought it was all a joke… but then… so many kids couldn’t get ahold of their parents who were on the coast somewhere and they we saw the stories on the news and heard the radio broadcasts… a group of us from the school decided to pack up and leave before it reached us and we’ve been on the move ever since.”

“Must be hard for you then… staying in one place for so long.”

Blaine shrugged his shoulders up a touch and Kurt watched as his pupils flit around his eyes while he thought.  “It’s not as bad as I imagined actually.  You meet a lot of weird people and groups on the road.  This place is a veritable utopia in comparison with most places I’ve been.  So isolated from the effects of The Others and people seem to get along for the most part…”

Kurt drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, interest piqued now as he looked back at Blaine just as intently.  “What kind of people have you met?”

“Oh… there’s all kinds of groups, but they can usually be categorized as breeders, renegades, techies, families, half-breeds, or religious fanatics.  Your community being the exception to any categorizing.”

All those terms were new to Kurt.  He had heard the term renegade before, but didn’t actually know the functional definition.  “What are…. all of those things?”

Blaine sat up a little straighter once he knew he had Kurt’s attention and explained.  “Well breeders are groups that think they need to repopulate the earth with humans and have kids like it’s their job….”

No thank you, Kurt thought to himself.  The occasional child was fine, but Kurt couldn’t see a whole community of them, especially when they were created not out of love to another person, but out of a desire to repopulate a planet that was no longer under human dominion.  How fair was it to a child, let alone a bunch of children, to have them when you couldn’t ensure their safety from the pointy-eared bastards who had destroyed civilization, or even ensure you could feed them for that matter?

“... renegades are those who still wage war against The Others.  Small things though - like bombs and mines and that.  None of them are big enough operations to do anything major other than cause the Others a bit of annoyance.”

So needing chains of Others ears made more sense in that regard.  However, Kurt didn’t understand why people would make huge efforts to cause small hiccups in the operations of The Others.  The manpower and resources it would require wouldn’t compensate for any output they would hope to achieve.

“.... techies are getting fewer and farther between these days.  They’re trying to circumvent the Others by creating technology that might stifle their magic, but it’s been unsuccessful from what I’ve seen and heard.”

Definitely not something Kurt had ever heard of either.  He had only ever heard about Other magic, never seen it in action, and certainly couldn’t comprehend creating something to combat it.

“.... Families should be pretty self explanatory and are the most common.  They’ve stuck together over the years for survival and sometimes join with other families as their kids get older and pair up themselves.”

Which made sense.  Kurt had travelled with his own dad to this place after all, and would still be with his dad if Burt were still alive, whether that meant staying in the community or moving somewhere else.  So long as they were together, it wouldn’t have mattered.

“.... The religious fanatics are the worst.  They see The Others as God’s punishment for the sins of man.  All they do is try to appease God in whatever way they think is right.  Not surprisingly… some of them are also breeders as well as renegades.”

The thought was horrifying.  Not only hoards of small children, but religious zealot children as well.

As Blaine paused, Kurt realized that Blaine hadn’t explained the one term that had caught his attention the most.  “What about half-breeds?”

“Oh… well..”  Blaine pursed his lips as he thought about how to explain that one.  “Conspirators might be a better term… humans who’ve had children with Others or live peacefully with them.  Their offspring are half-breeds.  Renegades target them a lot because they know they’ll go down a lot easier.”

Kurt couldn’t help but gawk.  It was the first time he’d ever heard of Others that didn’t kill humans outright, let alone mate with them.  “I didn’t know that happened….”

Blaine just nodded, unphased by the thought, “Most of the kids I’ve seen have been under five, so it didn’t happen right after The Tides… but it’s pretty obvious they’re not totally human but also not Others.  There’s no sense to the matings either.  Men and women seem to be pretty balanced on the human side of the parenting, and there’s no preference to race or age or whatever.  Some people have tried to figure out what makes some humans desirable in that way to Others but no one can figure it out, nor can anyone figure out why those humans do it willingly and, apparently, happily.”

“And Renegades kill them?  Even if they’re just kids?”

Blaine glanced down then, with something akin to shame spreading over his face. “Yes.  Renegades live in a pretty black and white world.  You’re either human or you’re not.  Half-breeds and their human parents are really human in the eyes of Renegades because a real human would never sleep with the enemy or have their blood in them.”

Kurt didn’t know how to respond to that.  Sure, he hated the Others and what they represented, how they had changed his life and destroyed everything he had ever known.  He hated how they had take away his father’s possible chance of surviving his heart attack and how they had forced him up into this climate - but to kill kids.  No.  Kurt drew the line at that.  Others or not, kids were kids.  They had no more choice about what they were born into than Kurt had a choice about his sexuality.

“What about you…” Kurt finally said when he decided to speak up. “... what about the Warblers?”

“Survivalists… brothers in name, so kind of like a family.  This community too… I’d say it’s much the same.”

Kurt nodded at that, though thought to himself that if the community was a family, then he was that awkward cousin that hid in the basement at family get togethers.  

“Blaine…?”

“Yes?”

“If you’re survivalists… how did you come by the ears?”

A sigh, and Blaine stared down at his lap.  “I don’t know if it’s stupid to admit it… but… I’ve never actually killed anyone Kurt.”

“Why would that be stupid?”

“Because in some groups, killing Others is what makes you human.”

“Like Renegade groups?”

“Yes.”

“We just established that we’re not Renegades here Blaine.”

That earned Kurt a nod from Blaine who seemed to relax a little as he continued.  “Honestly… we needed to trade with some Renegades for some insulin for one of the guys who’s diabetic so we dug up some bodies that we knew another Renegade group had buried after a successful raid on a half-breed community and used the ears off them.  They don’t take the ears off half-breeds since they’re not the main threat, but a lot of the kids have those ears still….”

Kurt went white, and Blaine must have seen it because he looked away shamefully.  Those were still kids, and even if Blaine hadn’t killed them, he had still desecrated the bodies.

“I’m not proud of it Kurt… but they were already dead and we needed the insulin….”

“I’m going to read now.” Kurt managed to say after a full minute of silence while his stomach sunk in as a sour feeling ran through it.  He had looked at those ears.  Imagined that they had belonged to adult bodies of the enemy and just put them out of his mind.  Now to know that they had been taken off of children, innocent but for the fact they had been born out of two worlds, who had been killed because they were easier targets.   Kurt was not one to deny the evil of the Others, but no child should be faulted because of how they were born.  

Blaine, for once, did not try to engage Kurt in any further discussion, and also didn’t make any more eye contact for the rest of the day.  He napped, though fitfully, and Kurt did his best to ignore him and will away the pit in his belly.  He read, though not well, the words just drifting over him as he used them as a means to avoid the other man in the small room.  

It was easy to appreciate where Blaine had come from.  They needed insulin to keep someone who was already alive, still breathing.  The children were dead and could be seen as a resource to serve a worthy cause.

However, Kurt couldn’t help but draw up the image of the children Blaine had used a knife on still being diapers or clutching a doll or teddy bear in their rigor mortis.  Kurt didn’t think he would have been able to do the same, no matter what was at stake.

He finished his book and excused himself cooly an hour later to take the book to the community library (more of a room with piles of books in it that no one had really taken ownership of), check in at the clinic, and collect their dinners.  When he pass the wall though, his eyes wandered to where his dad’s name was.

If he needed those ears to save his dad, would there have been any question?

Of course the answer was no, and when he returned to the hut he had made the decision to speak with Blaine again, or at least cease the uncomfortable silence.

“Guess what?” Kurt asked in his best cheerful tone, which was unpracticed but made Blaine look up with wide hopeful eyes all the same.  

“It’s… stew!”

Blaine’s mouth turned up at the corners and he chuckled, accepting Kurt’s apparent forgiveness without question.  “Third day in a row hmm?  Someone must have kept them well stocked with venison.”

Kurt handed Blaine his flatbread with the stew thickly poured over top and sat on the edge of the bed to eat his own.  “Well sorry.  In the future I’ll try to hunt you a nice lobster.”

“I’m not complaining Kurt… whatever deer you kills tastes really good.”

Kurt picked up a chunk of meat between his fingers and popped it into his mouth.  “Well I do like to add a bit of allspice to my arrowheads.”

They chuckled together and the conversation from before wasn’t spoken of again.  While the thought did float through Kurt’s mind from time to time, it was just as quickly put out of his head when he acknowledged that Blaine likely wasn’t as happy with what he had had to have done to help his friend no more than Kurt would have had he been in his shoes at the time.  

“Trent also told me to tell you to get better quickly because he needs girl help.” Kurt mentioned as he ate.  He had had to drag himself away from Trent who, in the absence of Blaine, was obviously lonesome and clearly desiring social interaction given his feeble attempts at trying to keep Kurt in the room with conversation about the food and weather.  

Blaine made a vague blech noise as Kurt brought it up.  “Trent is utterly clueless when it comes to women and I get the feeling that Kitty is purposely playing hard to get with him just because he is so oblivious.”

“Hmm.”

Kurt only let himself feel slightly irritated by the thought that Trent wanted Blaine’s help with Kitty.  Somewhere in the back of his mind Kurt was well aware he had concocted a fantasy where Blaine with his honey eyes was just as gay as he was and knowing that he must be good enough with women to have Trent asking for help was forcing Kurt to have to squash that fantasy, however small it was.  Even if Blaine had been gay, it wasn’t like Kurt could entertain the thought of Blaine in that way.  He would be leaving in the spring after all and therefore not relationship material.

“Any hints about Kitty you know that I could share with Trent?”

Kurt grunted and rolled his eyes up as he thought.  He didn’t really didn’t know Kitty that well.  She was one of the ones around the community who gave him a wide berth unless she needed something from him.

“She’s been in a non-relationship with a guy named David Karofsky since she got here… kind of like a brother-sister thing.  They live together by the street corner where the train station was.”

Blaine arched an eyebrow, “Oh yah?  Good friends?  Or failed past relationship that just got comfortable to stay in?”

Kurt shook his head, “Most of the time they argue with one another so I don’t know how they’re friends and definitely not a past relationship.  Karofsky’s gay even though he still can’t say the word aloud.”

Blaine formed a silent O with his lips and nodded, apparently thinking on that fact.  

“Is he the big white guy who came with you guys when you picked up Trent and I?”

Kurt nodded.  “Yes.  The one that looks and smells like an old meatball…”

“You don’t like the guy huh?”

Kurt snickered and looked down at his food.  “That obvious huh?”

“Well when you first said his name you might have well of said Voldemort.”

Kurt laughed brightly then.  It took Blaine aback when it happened and he looked at Kurt curiously until Kurt was able to catch his breath to explain.

“That’s the first time in years I’ve heard anyone make a Harry Potter reference… I honestly thought people had forgotten about that.”

“Well… no one should forget a classic like that.  Did you see all the movies when they came out?”

And just like that, Karofsky was forgotten. 


	9. Chapter 8: Revelation

_**"You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you." - Heraclitus of Ephesus** _

When Blaine returned to his own shack it was a huge relief for Kurt. One of the reasons he had cleaned Blaine's home for him was so that Kurt could have a private place to do his daily washing. He might have seen Blaine in all his glory, but Kurt was not going to extend the other man the same privilege. The last time anyone else had seen him naked was his dad when he was a kid. He didn't figure having a sick man in his hut was reason to change that.

It also meant that Kurt could sleep in his own bed again - once he had swapped the pelts around anyhow. He didn't want to sleep on the same pelt Blaine had just in case any germs were there waiting to invade his body. Given how quickly the bug had spread into the community and held almost half the population hostage over the past couple weeks, it was clearly a virulent strain that Kurt was not going to mess with. He already had used up all his good luck when he didn't contract the bug when Blaine had puked on him as it was.

Kurt didn't realize how quickly he had become used to Blaine's presence until things went back to normal. Blaine was back to visiting Trent regularly and now had a swath of new friends courtesy of his new hero status so he was only in his shack to sleep. He at least made the effort though to keep Kurt supplied with music, so Kurt couldn't help but forgive him for that.

And the thought that he was forgiving of Blaine for being absent nagged at Kurt as well. Why should he have become so accustomed to another person so quickly that the quiet he awoke to each morning was disconcerting, even though he should have been sleeping much better since it was in a bed and not on the ground. What was there to forgive Blaine for? He wasn't expected to be in Kurt's home no more than Kurt wanted anyone else in his home. He was used to his privacy. It was safe, comfortable, known.

So why did his heart leap into his throat everytime Blaine stopped to wave to him when they passed on the street?

"I see whatever advice you gave Trent is working well." Kurt quietly noted one morning to Blaine in the lobby of the clinic when he saw Kitty and Trent flirting shamelessly with one another in the next room.

Blaine chuckled and shook his head, "He just needed a little self confidence is all."

"Is he one of the guys who has girlfriends in other places?"

Blaine shook his head, "No… Trent is… well… Trent's a stand up guy. Half the guys talk about taking what opportunities they have for the bedroom and Trent has always been insistent on waiting for the right person. It's gotten him some grief sure, but look at that…" Trent was on the receiving end of a peck on the cheek from Kitty as Kurt and Blaine peeked in. "... none of the guys could ever say they've looked so happy as he does right now."

Kurt smirked. "And all it took was his getting his leg crushed."

"Well…" Blaine's head turned to look towards Kurt with a small smirk of his own, "... maybe there is such a thing as fate… or perhaps it's just Trent being Trent - making good on a bad situation."

"If only we could all have his disposition." Kurt mused, looking away from Blaine so their eyes didn't catch. He was having a harder time evading those honey eyes and loosening himself from their hold when they did capture him.

"Well, since he's occupied, maybe you could have lunch with me instead? I know you're probably on your way to something, but -"

"I was." Kurt lied.

"... but maybe, just this once, you could delay it?"

"Fine. But keep me entertained."

Blaine beamed and led the way outside, now a pro at finding his way to the kitchen. They waited in line and collected their meals, going to sit at a table as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

"Holy shit. Hummel's having lunch with the rest of us." Noah exclaimed then.

"Has hell frozen over?" Santana chirped in addition to the commentary.

Kurt just sighed and ignored the comments, setting about eating his meal.

"I know you said you rarely eat with everyone else Kurt…." Blaine said, voice lowered, "But is it really that unusual?"

Kurt gave Blaine a solitary nod, looking down at his food with what might appear to anyone else to be deep interest though it was really just his attempt to avoid eye contact with anyone else.

"Do you want to eat somewhere else then?"

"It's okay." Kurt said quietly, not looking up and speaking towards his food. "I don't want to disrupt your meal."

Blaine's shadow on the table shook its head and then stood, taking both plates, "You're not. Come on."

Kurt stood and walked after Blaine, trying to sort in his head what the hell had just happened and why Blaine was so insistent on making things easier for him. They walked for a ways in silence before coming to the library where Blaine set their plates each on a stack of unsorted books and sat on the floor. "There."

"You didn't have to do this you know Blaine… I'm used to it all… and it's not like they were being mean or anything." Kurt noted as he sat himself on the floor aside Blaine and took his plate in hand.

"No. They weren't… but it didn't take a genius to figure out you weren't comfortable there and I did invite you to lunch after all. I don't want you to be uncomfortable on my account."

God why wasn't Blaine gay and staying in town Kurt thought to himself as he looked with wide eyes over at the other man. It had been so long since someone had taken the time to really look at him and see how he was feeling.

"Can I ask why you're so tense around other people or is that an off limits conversation?"

Kurt sighed and shook his head, "It's just… a long story… and if it's okay, I really don't want to spend my lunch telling it." Or trying to figure it out for that matter. What had started as some of the group making fun of his ears and skin tone had gotten so much worse, so quickly, that Kurt still couldn't figure it out in his head. All he knew was that it had culminated in a hate kiss and a beating.

"Of course." Blaine smiled and nodded acceptingly, much to Kurt's relief.

"I've been thinking…." Kurt started, deciding to change the conversation dramatically to get the focus off him. "... has anyone ever looked into how humans and Others mate to get half breeds? I read in a biology textbook that something has to be of the same species in order to be able to breed, and that would mean…."

"That Others are related to humans. Yah. It's been brought up before." Blaine said with a nod, "Though it could be like a horse and donkey thing… making mules that can't reproduce. No one is sure if those kids are fertile since they're so young."

"Still… it certainly raises a whole lot of interesting question about them."

"And us."

"Like?"

Blaine licked the stew off his lips, something Kurt couldn't help but watch, and explained, "Like if humans are genetically related to them, then why can't we use magic and they can?"

Kurt shrugged, "Never seen them use magic to begin with. Never really seen one for that matter - only on television."

"Really?" Blaine perked up at that, looking at Kurt with something he could only see as surprise.

"Really. Most people here haven't."

"Wow." Blaine said softly, voice trailing off as he looked off in the distance for a moment, "Maybe that's why this place is relatively sane."

Kurt chuckled and shook his head, "On the surface anyhow. What about you? What have you seen of them?"

"Well… when we go into the old major cities you can usually see them on patrols. You have to use binoculars though because the best place to stay in the old cities is high up in old apartments. They don't seem to like to go up too high…."

"Wonder why that is…"

Blaine shrugged, "Not sure. Odd considering some of them can fly or at least change into things that fly."

"What else can they do?"

Blaine smiled over at Kurt then, a simple gesture that for some reason unnerved Kurt. "If they hadn't totally killed off humanity and pushed us to these barren places I would call them amazing… "

"But they did, so…"

Blaine nodded and looked back away freeing Kurt of his gaze and letting Kurt breath again. "Some change shape… some can change size… I've seen some fly and turn into puffs of dark smoke… there's those that can create water and fire in their hands… they all seem to have a special talent…"

"We really didn't stand a chance."

"No. We didn't."

It was quiet then as the certainty of that statement swept over them and they spent the moment eating.

"How did you guys fuel your quads?"

"They're diesel… so there was more fuel available to use when the Tides happened…. and we all keep a map of places that still have diesel stores - like old gas stations. When we found a good batch we added some stabilizers to it and hid it. We have them stored everywhere…."

"And what'll you do once they're used up?"

Blaine chuckled, "Apparently… and this is what we've been told, haven't tried it yet, used fryer fat is a good fuel source. That stuff never degrades if the fast food bins is any indication…. god I miss fast food."

Kurt chuckled. "That is one thing I definitely don't miss."

"What do you miss?"

Kurt had to think about that. He knew questions like that were common among the community but it was the first time it had been directed to him.

"Hot showers."

"With smelly soap…." Blaine added on, eyes closing as he began to imagine it.

"And a towel right out of the dryer waiting when you got out…." Kurt said, moaning softly as he pictured it.

"Slippers too…"

"And deodorant…."

"Another homeless jab Kurt?" Blaine said, peeking an eye open at him.

Kurt laughed and shook his head, "No… honestly… I used to spend so much time taking care of my skin and hair… Time that would have been better spent learning some useful skill for this world."

"I think you're doing okay Kurt… everyone says you're the best shot in town after all."

Kurt looked away. Sure he was, but what good was being able to hunt when he couldn't keep his little shack in one piece without a whole lot of effort? And there were others things he could have learned about that would have benefitted him more than the fashion and music he had gravitated towards as a youth - like mining for example. If the community could just find a good source of coal they'd be a lot more comfortable….

"Besides… you and I… and so many others were kids when the Tides came. There was no way we could have been prepared…" Blaine added on, seeing that Kurt was lost in his own thoughts.

"I'm just glad my mom didn't have to live through it…" Kurt said without thinking and then winced his eyes shut. He hadn't meant to let that out, to speak of her aloud. It made her real.

"She died before the Tides?"

Kurt just nodded as an image of his dad grabbing the last family photo the three of them had had out of his wallet before throwing it away, saying that he wouldn't ever need to worry about credit cards again as he tried to cheer Kurt up on the road north.

"Was it peaceful at least?"

Kurt shook his head that time. She was bound by cords and IV's to her hospital bed, a ghost of her former self. She didn't look like she did in the picture his dad carried, or the one Kurt kept in his mind for that matter.

"Sorry."

Kurt eyes split apart to small cracks and turned to look at Blaine, quiet for a moment before responding.

"Thank you."

"For what…?" Blaine looked confused.

Kurt shut his eyes again, "For listening even though I wasn't talking."

"Oh…."

"I should take this back and get to hunting." Kurt said, referring to his empty plate as he started to stand. Blaine's hand dashed out then and took the plate from him.

"I'll do it. You go."

Kurt nodded his thanks and left then, returning to his hut to get his bow and arrows so he could hunt as he said. It wasn't actually what he had planned on doing, but he needed to get away after opening up to Blaine. It had been so long since he had spoken so candidly with anyone and it was like tearing open a scar on his heart and letting tainted blood cascade through his body. It ached, and Kurt needed an escape. Hunting was as good of an escape as anything.

Two jack rabbits later and after releasing one of the local wild dogs caught in one of his snares, Kurt returned in the dark to the community. Even though it was still around supper time, darkness has swept over the land. By the time winter solstice came, or Christmas for those few who still celebrated it, it would be dark for more hours of the day than it would be light.

He turned in his catches, collected his dinner, and started making his way back to his home as Kurt was ready to turn in early since he had an early patrol shift the next morning. As he passed by the clinic, a grating female voice spoke out to him.

"Hey elf boy, you and that little hobbit are getting pretty close." Kitty said with a smug smirk, leaning against one of the wooden pillars to the side of the doorway as she looked at Kurt.

Kurt stopped in his tracks and let out a low sigh to release any anger the old nickname brought up in him before he looked toward Kitty with icy eyes. "Can I help you?"

"Oh no." She stepped down from where she was and approached him, her overconfidence radiating off her and that damned bouncing ponytail that Kurt would have loved to cut off. "Just wanted to thank you. I'm told it's because of you that I get to spend my days being appreciated as much as I should be."

Kurt looked at her blankly for a moment and then spun his wrist around, "... and by that you mean….?"

"Well rescuing Trent for one. He keeps telling me that you picked up the call that resulted in him being here so he could butter me up with compliments all day, and of course for accepting, once again, that you shouldn't be in a position of any power which resulted in my being selected for the new medic position."

Kurt tried to stop himself from rolling his eyes, but the strain of holding back was painful so he ended up doing it anyways. Kitty was nothing if not full of herself. "Whatever…." He looked away then, preparing to continue his journey when she called out.

"Wait."

Kurt looked over his shoulder, giving Kitty one more chance to say something worthwhile.

"You shouldn't have to be so miserable all the time you know. At least get some action from that hobbit before he goes."

Another eye roll. "Kitty. Even I was so free with that, that hobbit, and I'm assuming you mean Blaine, is straight."

She laughed at that. Guffawed really and shook her head. "Oh the hell he is."

Kurt knew she was conniving and wouldn't be played to feel like he had a shot just because Kitty teased him into it. "He is."

"Oh I assure you, he's gayer than the fancy song and dance show Rachel makes the kids put on every year."

"Give it a rest Kitty. I think I know him better than you."

Kitty smirked and folded her arms over her chest. "Oh really? Well… good news for me then…." She looked back to the clinic and yelled, "Oh BLAINE!"

Kurt's eyebrows shot up to the top of his brow and in anticipation of whatever Kitty had in store, he turned in place and stood there as Blaine came out on command, looking first to Kitty, then to Kurt, and then over to Kitty again, his face knitted up in confusion.

"Is… everything… okay?"

"Oh fine sweetie…" Kitty's words dripped with syrupy sweet and she strode over in front of Blaine. "... I was just wondering…" She placed a hand to his chest and Kurt's heart rate shot up with the motion - as did Blaine's own eyebrows. "... Kurt, once again, won't go to the dance with me this weekend… so I was thinking…" Her fingers drummed over Blaine's chest while she locked eyes with him, batting her eyelashes with a little more than suggestiveness, "... maybe you could take me…"

"Eh-heh…." Blaine flummoxed, adam's apple bobbing in his throat as he backed up a step, away from the wandering hand of the woman trying to seduce him on the spot before Kurt's own eyes.

"Oh come on…." Her fingers followed his movements, though flicked under his chin, rubbing the scruff there and winking so that Kurt could see. "Trent can't dance, so he won't mind…"

Blaine took another step back, and looked to the side to Kurt for help, who just gave him a shrug. It wasn't like Kurt knew how to handle any woman, let alone Kitty.

"I'm pretty sure he would mind actually…" Blaine stuttered as he looked back to Kitty, finding himself abandoned by Kurt in this situation.

"Oh no. He said I should ask someone else to take me until he can spin me. Besides…" She ignored Blaine's apparent discomfort and wound her hands around his hips, Blaine worrying his lower lip in his teeth as she made the motion, and then he went wide eyed when she pressed against him. "... I need someone who can follow me back home afterwards."

Kurt felt his stomach lurch then, not only because of the gratuitous display of sexuality from a woman, but because he didn't want to see Blaine lose any sense of sensibility and go for it.

"God… Kitty…." Blaine shoved himself back and out of her arms, "You know I'm not interested in… women parts. And even if I was, I wouldn't go behind Trent's back like that." His face went red with the admission and he seemed to be keeping his eyes away from Kurt once he said it.

"Oh I know - and neither would I for that matter." Kitty smirked and the act she had been putting up fell away as did her hands to her side. "Just making sure!"

And with that revelation, Kitty Wilde walked back into the clinic, her ponytail bouncing behind her head.

"So… that was incredibly weird…." Kurt managed to spit out while his head spun along with his heart, making him feel like a teenage boy again.

"Yah… uh…" Blaine's head turned towards Kurt, though his eyes looked down towards the ground in what looked like shame. "... sorry. I don't know what the hell just happened there."

"With Kitty, you really never know - and it's best not to try and figure her out either. Your brain will end up hurting too much."

That got a weak chuckle out of Blaine, and then his hand came up to rub the base of his neck, "I'm getting that…"

"So…. gay huh?" Kurt's mouth went to work before his mind even had time to filter the question.

"Yes… but…" Blaine's brow wrinkled as he then looked up in confusion at Kurt with pools of honey eyes. "... I thought you knew."

Kurt's own brows lifted and he shook his head slowly, "No. Not a clue before now."

"Oh… well… I just thought you were homophobic…."

"What?!" Kurt's head shake went from slow to quick. "Not even…. Blaine… what the hell gave you that idea?"

Blaine gave the back of his neck another rub and looked towards Kurt with guilt drowning his features, "You didn't seem real pleased about that Karofsky guy being gay… and you wouldn't come near me when I was staying with you…."

Kurt's eyes rolled up, on both accounts. "Oh god Blaine… I don't care about Karofsky's sexuality. I just don't like the guy as a general rule - straight or gay…. and I didn't come near you because you were sick. I didn't want to catch it."

"Oh…."

"Good grief… of all the people to think of as homophobic you thought I was… really?"

Blaine let out a small giggle and nodded, "Well… I mean…"

"Fuck Blaine, I'm gay too. How do you think I knew Karofsky was gay?"

"Oh."

Blaine's face was priceless as it went from awkwardly guilty to genuinely surprised, his eyes looking Kurt up and down as if he truly didn't believe it.

It was honestly the first time Kurt ever had someone surprised to discover he was gay, so he allowed himself to appreciate the novelty, a small grin tugging up the corners of his lips. Blaine eventually seemed to realize he was gawking and locked his eyes back onto Kurt's face.

"Well I kind of feel like an ass now."

Kurt laughed at that too and gave his head a small shake, dismissing the self degrading comment Blaine bestowed upon himself.

"Don't worry about it. Though I wish I could say it's a common mistake."

"Everyone else knows?"

Kurt just nodded at that. How Blaine couldn't figure it out was beyond him. Generally the voice was a giveaway - though he imagined that how he was when he was younger would have predisposed him to more stereotypes - fashionable, flippant, and fastidious about shopping. Those who knew him then would have had no problem assuming his sexuality.

"Huh."

"You really thought I was a homophobe Blaine? Really?"

Blaine nodded meekly, guilty smile on his face. "Sorry. You have this whole tough guy thing going on and you've always seemed uncomfortable when I wanted to move in beside you so I thought…."

"For the record, I'm uncomfortable with everyone."

"Noted. Even if I don't understand why."

Silence floated between them after that until Blaine made another awkward chuckle and excused himself.

"I should… ah… get back to Trent. He's probably wondering…"

"Yeah." Kurt quickly agreed, "Say hello for me."

Kurt walked back home then, perhaps a little too quick on his feet. For the second time that day he felt the need to escape. Escape what though was the question in his mind. Perhaps it was just the awkwardness of that whole situation or that, for once, Kurt had been very wrong about something. Worse yet, he had been outsmarted by Kitty on the matter.

No. He hadn't been outsmarted. He had been used for her amusement. She must have known the truth from Trent and then used it against Kurt for her own merriment. She probably enjoyed seeing him writhe in discomfort at the scene and then probably listened into the embarrassment that followed. Any woman who spent so much time with Karofsky voluntarily had to be at least a little vindictive, and given how bitchy Kitty was regularly, she more than just a little vindictive.

He seethed as he ate his meal, picking it up with harsh jabs of his fingers and chewing as if he were gnawing on Kitty's head. What an absolute bitch. What Trent saw in her was a mystery, but it was no shock that she was so close with Karofsky after a scene like that.

Thankfully he had a new book borrowed from the makeshift library to occupy his mind for the remainder of the evening, which he was lost in until a light rapping came from outside his door.

"Who is it?"

Did he really have to ask the question he wondered to himself, only one person visited him.

"Blaine."

"Come in."

Kurt set his book to the side and watched as Blaine came in, teeth chattering and shivering slightly as he cursed the cold.

"Get used to it."

Shivering yet, Blaine nodded and knelt by the fire, warming himself before pulling a phone out of his pocket and handing it to Kurt. "Here. Your favourite."

"How did you know this one was my favourite." Kurt asked as he took the phone, one with a distinctive green case that was indeed his favourite of Blaine's as it had a medley of Broadway showtunes on it. Something he would have never admitted liking more than all the others lest it make him appear more gay than he had already presumed Blaine had known prior to their run in earlier that evening.

"Battery on it is always completely drained when you return that one and even though you try to make it seem like you like them all equally, your hand and eyes always hover over that one when you pick your music out for yourself." Blaine said with a simple shrug, as if anyone could have seen that.

Kurt fingered the phone gently. If it was possible to love an inanimate object, it was certainly true of him and that phone. He had even muffled his humming one night with a shirt when he knew he would have been heard by Blaine carrying a tune along with the music on that phone. He had tried to not be obvious about his preference, but Blaine had seen through it.

"So… the dance coming up. Those fun?" Blaine piped up, trying to make conversation as Kurt just looked over the phone in his hand.

"Don't know. I don't go."

"Really?"

Kurt just nodded. He didn't see the appeal. All that ever happened, according to what he overheard the next day, was that people got drunk off homemade alcohol and ground against one another to poorly played live music. He didn't drink, he didn't have anyone to grind with, and he certainly wasn't going to stand poorly done music - especially when he now had Blaine's phones.

"Well… maybe you could come to this one?"

Kurt shook his head and smirked, "No - and neither are you for that matter. In case you've forgotten, we leave for a scavenging trip tomorrow and won't be back in time for that dance."

"Oh…" Blaine said, eyes glancing over the fire, "... right. I didn't think we'd be gone that long."

"We're hitting up a small town further away. A day of travel at least each way."

"I'd better make sure Trent knows…."

"You and him both need warmer clothing for the winter."

Blaine nodded, looking down at his threadbare clothes, the only pair he had left after his bout with the flu. Kurt just hoped he tried to wash them now and then, and was glad Blaine never took off his shoes around him because he imagined his socks stunk to high hell.

"You know how to ride a horse?"

Again Blaine nodded, smirking a little as he admitted, "I was a polo champion before The Tides."

Kurt let out a low whistle at that. "Parents in New York, brother in California, was going into a boarding school, and a polo champ? How loaded were you before?"

"My parents did alright." Was Blaine's humble answer, though from the slight glint in his eyes Kurt picked up on as he said it, he knew that Blaine came from good money.

Not that it mattered anymore. Money didn't do Blaine any good when he couldn't buy new socks or clothing anymore.

"So…. you going to hog my fire all night or are you going to get yourself to your place and to bed?"

Blaine blinked and then bolted up to stand. "Sorry."

Kurt shrugged, setting down the phone after pressing the buttons needed to play the music and then picking up his book. "Good night."

"Night Kurt."

Blaine left hurriedly and once he was gone, Kurt had to reread the page he had just finished just to remember what had happened when he left off. After finishing the chapter, he gave up on trying to remain focused on both the music and the book, letting the music win as he put the book down again and curled up in his pelt bed to sleep.

The next day was the usual routine, save for the preparation for leaving in the afternoon. Aside from ensuring his backpack was still sturdy enough to hold anything he'd find, Kurt didn't have to take care of any of the preparation. He was already well stocked on arrows, which he made himself in his spare time, and he had triple checked his bow to ensure there were no weak spots.

The highlight of his day had to be young Beth running away from Noah and to him to give him a hug. Having the youngster suddenly attached to his side with his arms wrapped securely around him gave him a jolt of surprise, which seemed to melt his heart rapidly. Ignoring the onlookers, he knelt down, though only a little because Beth was tall for her age, and hugged her back.

"Hey. Thanks. What's this for?"

As she pulled back, she beamed at him, "Just 'cause."

"Well that's the best reason." He said with a smile returned to her and stood back up.

"Have a good day Mr. Hummel!" She said, waving back to him as she ran back to her father, who looked both proud and confused at once as he took his daughter by the hand and spoke quietly to her.

"I will now…." He murmured to himself, watching the little girl leave with her dad. Flashes of dreams he'd had where he'd been a father flitted through his mind and he had to take a sharp intake of breath to draw himself back to the present.

Being a father was hardly an option for him anymore. Gay men were only just being accepted as viable parents when The Tides happened and now the concepts of surrogacy and adoption was as dated as the French Revolution or the Civil War. He wasn't going to be a dad and that was final.

He was interrupted a second time on his way back to his hut to smother his coals so his home didn't burn down while he was away. It was Karofsky of all people.

"Kurt, can I talk to you?"

"What is it Karofsky?" Kurt said, ice settling over him as he prepared to speak with the brute as quickly as he could manage.

"David's fine you know… there's no other David's in town…." Karofsky wrung his hands and glanced down to the ground, evading Kurt's frigid glare.

"Fine. What is it David?"

"Well… I was just wondering…. if you'd like to go to the dance with me?"

He spoke the last part so hurriedly that Kurt had to take a second to ensure what he was actually hearing was real. Even so, he had to make sure.

"Come again?"

"Would you be my date for the dance?"

Kurt's mouth went dry and he just stared at Karofsky, who was doing his best to avoid Kurt's eyes, looking everywhere but them while he continued to fidget with his hands.

"I'm going on the scavenging trip today."

"Oh… I'm sorry… I didn't know…."

Kurt's brow was furrowed and his eyes jumped around to ensure this wasn't just some odd prank. He had to make sure no one was snooping in on them, ready to jump out and laugh at him. No one was around them though, and Karofsky's voice was full of honest-to-God sincerity. Kurt didn't know how to handle it.

"Why are you asking me something like that anyhow Karofsky?"

"David…"

"Fine. David. Why did you ask me?"

"I think I love you."

The ice in Kurt's heart just cracked a little and he took a step back, now double checking to make sure they were the only ones there.

"You THINK you love me?"

Karofsky looked up then, so obviously nervous as his eyes tentatively met Kurt's and his lower lip was pulled into his mouth for an anxious nibble before he replied.

"I don't know for sure because you always have this wall up so I'm not even sure if what I love is really you or the front you put up… but I have… for awhile…"

"Oh for…." Kurt's arms swung out to either side, "Have you maybe considered that what you love is the idea of another gay guy in the community and you're tired of taking care of your own needs?"

Karofsky shook his head at that, "No… and that's not it… but even if it was - do you really want to spend the rest of your life alone Kurt?"

"I would rather spend my life alone than hook up with the guy who led an attack on me after he forced me into kissing me… yes."

Kurt could see the colour change in Karofsky's eyes as he said that, and he wasn't sure if talking so candidly was a mistake or not, but he didn't regret it. Karofsky's eyes went from darkened to lighter as his pupils contracted along with his fists - now at each side of him.

"That was YEARS ago Kurt… and I apologized… and I'd apologize again and again if you wanted. Why can't you let it go? I hate myself for doing that to you! You have no idea how much I regret it… but what makes it worse is that no matter how hard I try to be a decent person now, I'll never seem to earn your forgiveness."

"You can't expect me to just forget - "

"I'm not expecting you to forget it Kurt. I'm hoping you'll forgive me for it one day."

Kurt sighed and crossed his arms over his chest, "And then what? Shack up with you and live happily ever after?"

Karofsky's eyes darkened again and his hands relaxed at his sides as Kurt said it and he nodded, "Or just live… it doesn't have to be happily ever after, but I don't want to just survive anymore. I want to live."

"I was being sarcastic David. It's not going to happen."

"Why? Why can't it happen?!" David became angry against just as he had so quickly mellowed out a moment before. "Is it that new guy? Are you screwing him?"

Kurt rolled his eyes, "No. I am not doing anything with him David. The issue is not him."

"So it's because you can't get over something that happened years ago…."

"I'm sure I could get over it David, I just don't see the need to."

"Because you could be happy!"

Happy. Was Kurt happy? He wasn't sure, and as he asked himself the question, not knowing if he was happy cemented for him that he probably wasn't. Even so, the idea of Karofsky making him happy was laughable.

"I'm going to ask you again you know." David said, breaking Kurt out of his thoughts, "Every time there's a dance… or special event, I'm going to ask you until you say yes."

"Then you'd better prepare for a lifetime of disappointment David."

The larger man sighed and looked to the ground, and Kurt took that as his cue to leave. He had wasted enough time on David Karofsky - he wasn't going to spend a moment more on him, especially if it meant delaying getting out of this town. Suddenly the scavenging mission seemed like a way to escape and if there was one thing Kurt always seemed to want to do, it was escape.

When he got back to his shack, he was met by Blaine.

"Hey… ah… what should I do to prepare?"

Kurt smiled and showed him how to smother his coals and tie up the entrance so animals couldn't sneak in. As the pair of them got them empty packs and headed towards town again, one of the local wild dogs came up and Blaine immediately knelt to the ground and started scratching behind the ears of what was some kind of black lab mixed with something else.

"Friend of yours?" Kurt asked with a hint of amusement as he watched Blaine happily accept big licks over his face from the friendly mongrol.

Blaine laughed and stood up, patting the dog on the head, "I guess. He's shown up everyday for the past couple weeks. Friendly guy too."

"Girl Blaine. She doesn't have the necessary parts to be a male dog."

"Oh." Blaine peeked down at the dog's lower appendages and nodded confirmation, "Must have missed that."

"You're not sharing your food with her are you? If you do she'll never leave you be and it'll be one more mouth to feed…."

Blaine shook his head, saying his goodbyes to the dog who trotted off as if she had important business of her own to attend to. "She's just friendly."

"Maybe she wants to stay in your shelter for the warmth…"

"Maybe she just wants a friend."

Kurt shrugged. His whole adult life had been about trades and exchanges, debts and repayments. It was about making sure he did his part so no one could accuse him of not contributing. If Kurt knew one thing, it was that there was a price for everything, and Blaine was getting duped by a dog for something.

"You never had a dog growing up?"

Kurt shook his head, "My mom was allergic to pet hair."

"Too bad. Dogs are great. Always happy to see you, willing to play when you are, great for cuddling."

"Shed hair everywhere, eat your food, constantly want your attention…."

"And yet you put up with me." Blaine said with a smug smirk directed over at Kurt.

Well he had a point. Kurt chuckled and nodded, "Yes. I do. Although I don't need to let you out to go to the bathroom."

"You did when I was sick… sorry about that by the way."

"You've apologized enough for that. Don't worry about it. I'm repressing the memory anyhow."

"Thank goodness. That was definitely not my finest hour."

"More like not your finest week."

The conversation continued well into town where Kurt waited outside of the clinic while Blaine said farewell to Trent and then they went to the organizational office where Mercedes already had several horses hitched up with saddlebags filled with rations and water bottles for them.

Waiting there for them was Santana, who, along with Kurt, went on almost all the scavenging missions, Sam, who at some point had signed up to be a guard in what the rumour mill suggested was a way to impress Mercedes, and Quinn.

"I would ask who's taking point but…" Quinn started and then looked over at Kurt, who only smirked in response as he pulled himself up onto a brown stallion.

"Come on then. Let's get as far as we can before our horses need to rest." Kurt announced once he was up top and everyone else was still climbing onto their own horses - Blaine noticeably going the extra mile and giving his horse pets and whispers in the ear.

They travelled along with the sun as it set - to the west, and then turned south along an old gravel road until the horses slowed and they set up camp for the night - having a meal of jerky and jam on bread before napping for a few hours and then making their way out again.

True to his history, Kurt took the lead for most of the trip. Blaine and Sam seemed to be getting along quite well and every time Kurt waited up for the group, the pair were talking and laughing about a variety of things. It was good for Blaine to make other friends, Kurt said to himself, though he couldn't help but feel a small twinge of jealously about it given that Blaine was the closest thing he had to a true friend and he didn't want to share if he could help it.

When Kurt didn't lead, he joined the conversations with Sam and Blaine. He laughed where it was appropriate, even though Sam's impressions of old actors were mediocre at best and the pair's reenactments of old movie scenes were awkward and forced. Kurt at least knew most of what they were trying to do, even when Quinn looked ready to kill them for the noise they were making.

"Honestly, I'm surprised Kurt hasn't threatened you boys yet!"

Sam and Blaine both looked to him then and Kurt gave them a small, nonchalant shrug, "I'm trying to loosen up a little."

And while Quinn cursed under her breath about having to take on the role of bitch since Kurt wasn't going to step up to it, Kurt realized that he meant what he had said. Karofsky was right about one thing - he needed to stop surviving and start living.


	10. Chapter 9: Debauchery

**_"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water." - W.H. Auden_ **

It turned out that loosening up was not as easy as Kurt initially thought.  It took everything in him to hold back his agitation when Sam and Blaine began talking about a shooting video game they had both played when they were younger and made the noises and actions associated with it.  When Santana started openly talking about her bedroom life with Britany, again Kurt had to refrain from telling her to shut up.  Then Quinn started in on how Noah was an idiot for various reasons and Kurt just wanted to tell her to keep it to herself.  There was never any reason to air domestic complaints as openly as Quinn did.

So he just stayed quiet, and took out his annoyance on his teeth as he ground them.  

They finally reached the town they intended to scavenge, and not a moment too soon because Kurt was about to lose it on Sam who was showing Blaine how he could make fart noises with his armpit when they spotted it.  It wasn’t a big town, in fact it qualified as a village on the map they had - meaning it had only been home to around 300-1000 people.   As such, there wasn’t going to be many stores they could check out, so they’d be going through people’s homes.  On the flip side though, villages tended to be ignored by other groups who opted to go to cities where there were more places to go through so it could be that this place wasn’t as touched as others.

“It’s like one of those little towns that they had those old Disney movies set in….” Blaine murmured as they walked the horses through the center of the town.  

“Probably started as a farming community gathering site or something….” Kurt said, taking note of how old the church at the center of town looked.  Definitely a community grown around old world beliefs and practices.  

“It’s not too close to any rivers or anything… it might have been safe for people to stay in.” Quinn piped up, peering at the map folded to a manageable size in her hands.

“‘Cept so many people left safe places to check on family and friends in unsafe places.” Santana said with a snort.  “Regular zombie apocalypse movie idiot stuff.  Isn’t a Disney movie, that’s for sure.”

Blaine and Sam nodded in agreement with that and Kurt just shrugged.  He hadn’t been a horror movie aficionado back before The Tides to know if the statement was true or not.  He did know that when the coastal cities had been taken so quickly, and easily, that panic was widespread everywhere else.  Some people left their homes to find families, some left them because it wasn’t clear in the early days that The Others were only interested in holding cities near large bodies of water or waterways.  Whatever the reason, they had yet to run into any survivors staying in any of the places they scavenged.

“You ever come across a town that’s still intact?” Sam asked of Blaine, vocalizing Kurt’s own thoughts.

Blaine gave a small nod, “Just tiny ones though.  Your community is the largest gathering of humans I’ve ever seen.”

“And the largest gathering of non-humans you’ve seen would be….?” Santana inquired, picking up on the one key word Blaine used.

All eyes turned onto Blaine who just shook his head and looked down, “Rather not talk about it…”

“Why?  Think we can’t handle it?”

“No.  I’m sure you can, I just don’t think I can.  I’d like not to bring up old wounds….”

Looks were exchanged between the regular community members and Blaine’s silence seemed accepted, though Kurt couldn’t help but feel nibbles of curiosity eating away at him as they continued to ride.

The first order of business in town was ensuring that it was indeed empty.  Homes were peeked into, and the group checked for signs of recent habitation - from freshly put out fires to fresh tracks.  Not finding anything, now they focused on finding a home for the night.

“Dear god.  Please one with separate bedrooms this time.” Santana huffed as they looked into the first house and quickly left it as soon as they realized it was overrun with raccoons.

Several more were checked and deemed unworthy for various reasons - from mildew rot to floors that had caved in over the years.  Finally they found a quaint little home that seemed to have withstood most of the elements and nature over the past years and set themselves up.

Santana claimed the master bedroom with Quinn, and Sam found a kid’s room decorated with Star Wars - complete with the sheets, curtains, and wall decals to make it a true dream for him, leaving Blaine and Kurt in what appeared to be a teenage boy’s room based on the fact it was filled with old band posters and clothing about the right size for a growing boy.

“You should try on some of those clothes Blaine.  They look like they might fit you.”

Blaine chuckled and nodded, pulling out a swath of black shirts from a dresser, “Think this kid was into the goth scene much?”

Kurt scanned over the posters on the wall, all of them were for screamo and deathrock.  “Yeah… I think that’s probably a pretty safe bet….”

“So… do you want the side of the bed by the wall or by - “

“I’m not sleeping with you Blaine.”

“But - “

“I’ll stand watch tonight.”

“All night?”

“I generally do.”

“Oh.”

Kurt helped go through the drawers then, looking for clothing for Blaine and himself.  In the end, it ended up just being for Blaine alone because the clothing was too short on Kurt.

“I’m still waiting for a growth spurt…” Blaine admitted sheepishly, packing some of the warmer clothes that fit into his backpack.

Kurt chuckled, “Don’t worry about it.  You’ll have more clothes to choose from this way.  It’s a good thing you look good in black.”

“You think?” Blaine immediately perked up at the offsided compliment and Kurt had to backtrack on his words quickly.

“Well, I mean…. everyone looks good in black.”

“Oh.”

More drawers were opened and rifled through, save for one of the night tables which Kurt closed as quickly as he opened it, seeing a stack of dirty magazines with the top one opened to a less than flattering picture of a naked woman and lubricant inside.  “Definitely a teenage boy…”

The pair was about to go through the closet when Santana burst in, wide eyed and with a grin that ran from ear to ear.  “There’s a shitload of booze in the kitchen!”

“Oh god…” Kurt groaned under his breath as soon as Santana ran off to announce the news to Sam in the room across the hall.

“Not a good thing?”

“Santana is a weepy drunk…  Quinn is a mean drunk…”

“And you are?”

“On watch.”

Blaine made a tutting sound with his tongue in his mouth.  “Kurt.  If you want to drink - I’ll take watch for you.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“I don’t trust anyone.”

Blaine face seemed to fall, but Kurt ignored it.  Truthfully he just didn’t want to drink.  He had seen what it did to so many other people - be it making them mean or weepy or just downright scandalous, and wasn’t interesting in letting that happen to himself.  

“Oh come on curls, don’t worry about Hummel.  He doesn’t let down his walls for anyone.” Santana quipped by the doorway.  Kurt automatically tensed.  He hadn’t realized she had been so close to hear him.

“What the hell does that mean Santana?” Kurt snapped back towards the doorway, where Santana strutted back into the room.

“It means that you’re an uptight bitch.  Now go guard while the rest of us enjoy ourselves.  Maybe you can figure out a way to get the pole out of your ass.”

Between them, Blaine’s eyes darted back and forth, and his adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed nervously.  “Hey now… no need to be-”

“Shut up.” Both Kurt and Santana shot towards Blaine who immediately brought his lips together tightly before the quarrelsome pair glared at one another.

“Here’s an idea.  YOU guard for once and I’ll enjoy myself.”

Santana seemed taken aback by the suggestion, and her tongue rolled between her lips as she considered before nodding once, “Fine.  Half and half though?”

Kurt nodded stiffly in return, “You can drink yourself drunk when I go on duty.”  He too was taken aback, not expecting Santana to actually accept the offer, especially when it meant putting off getting buzzed.

“Oh I look forward to it.” She said with a broad grin, leaving the room then looking all too pleased with herself.

“Well… hey… good news huh?” Blaine offered, peering towards Kurt still nervous.

“I guess.  Now come on.  Let’s get this over with.”

It was going to be a chore.  Kurt didn’t really want to drink.  He had the occasional drink, usually when he was in pain - like when he needed to get stitched up a couple years ago after a shelf fell on him during a scavenging mission and cut open his side.  The community’s moonshine wasn’t great on the palette, but it did take the edge off the ache.

Sam and Quinn were already in the living room and already had a bottle opened for each of them.  Santana wasn’t lying when she said there was a lot of alcohol.  On the coffee table was no less than ten bottles of different types of drinks.  

“None of this stuff goes bad…?”

Sam laughed and shook his head, “Not if it’s not been opened before and it looks the family was preparing for a big party!  Bet they didn’t know the party would come ten years later!”

Blaine looked over the offerings and then picked up a dark brown bottle, taking the bottle opener offered by Sam and winching off the cap before he looked back to Kurt.  “What’s your preference?”

“Ah….”  Kurt’s eyes again scanned the bottles, looking for maybe a name that was familiar at least.

“Hummel’s going to drink with us mere mortals?  Has hell frozen over?” Quinn said, bottle balanced against her lips as she looked over with one brow lifted.

“Yah man.  I never see you even at any of the parties, let alone drinking.” Sam offered, eyes on Kurt as well.

With a roll of his eyes, Kurt just grabbed the bottle closest to him and held it out to Blaine to open.  Blaine glanced at the bottle, then up at Kurt again, skepticism written all over his features.

“Just open the damned thing up.”

Blaine complied, and then gave the bottle opener back to Sam.   Before anyone could even suggest saying cheers, Kurt took a swig back and winced.  It was smokey and strong, but he wasn’t going to let them see a little bit of alcohol be stronger than he was so he swallowed it down and then took another sip, though a smaller amount.

“Figure’s Hummel’s a whiskey drinker.”

Kurt shot a look over to Quinn who shrugged her shoulders up and continued to drink, reclined out on a musty looking brown chair - part of a set it seemed as Sam was sitting on the couch that matched.

Blaine sat down at the other end of the couch, leaving Kurt to take the loveseat.  He sat on the edge gingerly, not trusting it to not give out given it’s age and misuse.  And, of course, there was always the threat of bedbugs or other insects nesting within.  One had to be careful with old furniture.

“So how’d you do it Blaine?” Sam asked, looking to his couch-mate.

“Do what?”

“Get Hummel to drink with us?”

Blaine glanced towards Kurt, brow furrowed and then looked back to Sam, “I didn’t do anything.  Santana took over the first half of watch for him…”

“Kurt never gives up watch duty.  He doesn’t trust anyone else to watch his ass but himself.”

“Screw off Quinn.” Kurt snarled, taking another sip of the drink to which he was rapidly becoming acclimatized to.  

“Maybe if you screwed a bit more you’d be less of a bitch.” Quinn snapped back.

“See,” Kurt glanced over at Blaine, “Mean drunk.”

“Not drunk yet Hummel.”

“Right.”

“Why’re you and Santana so short with him?” Blaine asked, looking meekly towards Quinn.

“Oh please.  We give as good as we get, and with him the only thing that gets through is directness.”

“But… that isn’t being direct, it’s being rude.”

“Blaine.  I can handle myself.”

Blaine signed and nodded, taking another drink while Quinn and Kurt held each other’s gazes for a moment before she finally broke it off to take another swig.

“You know how hard it is to get Mercedes to notice me?” Sam suddenly spoke up towards the ceiling, staring off into air.  “I mean… what more do I have to do?”

“Try not screwing up all the time maybe?”

“Quinn.” Kurt warned.  It was one thing to be nasty to him, it was another to be that way towards Sam who was as gentle as they came.

“Most of the time I screw up it’s in front of her too… and because I’m distracted by her…. I’m like… a walking calamity in front of her.”

“Have you… maybe tried being direct with her about how you like her?” Blaine suggested.

“Oh… god no… I can’t do that.  She’d think I was a fool.”

A series of snickers erupted around Sam who looked up and around then, “What?  Why’s that funny.”

“No reason Sam.  Just… maybe Blaine has a point.  She doesn’t seem to be about subtlety.”  Kurt offered, sucking back his chuckles and drowning them out with another drink.

The blonde boy sighed and leaned his head back on the couch, “Maybe….”

“Besides, you can’t screw up on guard duty.  If we ever get attacked you can’t be tripping over your own feet because you see her.” Quinn tacked on.

That was something Kurt could see happening.  Sam was so lovesick over Mercedes that he would try to wave hello while an Other was trying to gut him.

“You guys ever been attacked before?” Blaine asked.

They all shook their heads.  

“No.  But we don’t let our guard down either.  That’s how trouble happens.”

“Makes sense.”

“You should check out some of the clothing in the master bedroom Blaine.  Some of the men’s clothes look like they might fit Trent.”

“I’ll do that… thanks.”

The next hour wore on as they talked about random things.  True to her nature, Quinn started becoming angry about everything as the alcohol began to affect her.

“Fucking Noah leaves his socks wherever the hell he wants!”  
“They keep putting me on afternoon shifts.  I hate afternoon shifts.”  
“I’m fucking tired of stew.  Is it so fucking hard to make something different?”  
“Eight years and I still have stretch marks.  Nothing makes them go away.”  
“Who the hell let Kitty in the clinic?  She’s more arrogant than ever!”

Kurt just let the alcohol wash over him.  He felt warm, especially in the tips of his ears and down in his toes, but he didn’t think he was any different than usual.  The whiskey had grown on him and he sipped it gingerly throughout Quinn’s ranting and Sam’s remorseful moanings about Mercedes.  Periodically Blaine would chirp in about something or giggle in such a delightful way Kurt couldn’t help but grin at the sound.

Blaine was definitely a goofy drunk.

“We should dance.  We should dance here since everyone else is dancing there!”  He suggested, standing up and wobbling as he did, gravity hitting him square in the gut.  Sam was quick to grab his arm though and pull him back.

“Whoa, whoa.  Calm down.”

“But we should dance.”  Blaine’s head snapped back to Kurt, “Don’t you think we should dance?”

Kurt chuckled and shook his head, “No.  We should definitely not dance.”

And at some point, Blaine began sitting upside down, legs hung over the back of the couch while his head tipped over the seat.  “Why don’t you have another kid Quinn?  Beth is such a sweetie…”

Kurt and Sam both tuned in on that, trying to shush him before Quinn heard, but it was too late.  Her eyes teared up and she looked away, “Can’t.”

“Does Noah not want another because I know….”  He hiccuped before continuing, “I know all these guys who would find you totally hot.”

She laughed at that and then looked back at Blaine, clearly bemused by his drunken antics.  “When I had her, there was some tearing that they couldn’t fix without modern medical technology…. my womb is barren now.”

“Well that fucking sucks.” Blaine said, pointing his finger at her and spilling some of his drink in the process of making the sloppy gesture.  

She laughed and nodded, Kurt and Sam breathing a sigh of relief.  The fact that Quinn wanted another, but couldn’t have another, was usually brought up when she was raging and drunk - though never directly like it just had been.  It seemed miraculous that Blaine had been granted a laugh from her.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you curse before Blaine.” Kurt mused, adeptly changing the topic to avoid any chance of rousing Quinn’s ire.

“That’s… that’s…. ‘cause I don’t.”  He wiggled his eyebrows a little at Kurt, who grinned at the upside down face he was receiving.  “I don’t curse…. curse words….”

“You just did.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Dude.  You totally did.” Sam spoke up.

“Well… fuck.”

They all laughed at that.  Kurt had to wonder if the alcohol was affecting him more than the heat spreading through him because he never laughed so easily.  Still, laughing was hardly scandalous and definitely forgivable behaviour.

“We should sing.”

“No Blaine.  No singing.”

Blaine ignored Kurt’s directive and began singing.  The song was not any one in particular, but a medley of different songs, all segwayed by Blaine humming and making lala noises as he seemed to be unclear on the lyrics.  His antics though had the other three chucking and shaking their heads.

“You’ve got a nice voice.”  Quinn admitted, suddenly eyeing up Blaine with catlike intensity.

“I like singin’.... it’s good for me.” Blaine murmured, eyes closing as he hummed a tune.

“So Blaine… you really gay….?” Was the blonde woman’s next question.

“Oh no no no no.”  Sam snapped and wagged a finger at Quinn, “None of this now.  You know what happened last time.”

“Wha?  I’m gay…. and what happened last time?” Blaine asked, eyes cracking open and looking blearily towards Quinn.

“Hmph.”  Quinn looked away, “Nothing.”

“Quinn and Noah had a falling out over something that happened once on a scavenging, that’s all Blaine.” Kurt interceded, trying to stop the dialogue from continuing any further.

“Yah.  Because she went all crazy slut on all the guys.” Sam said, effectively nulling Kurt’s effort to get through without any fallout.

“Oh please.”  Quinn snapped back at Sam, “You weren’t even there to know.”

“She even tried to seduce Kurt!”

“Really?”

Kurt groaned and looked away, “Let’s not talk about this.”

“Yes.  Let’s not.”  Quinn trilled, glowering at Sam.

“Didja think you’d try n’ get the gay outta me Quinn?  Cause I think you’re pretty and all… but I like weiner.”

“Thank you.  Got that.”  She managed to muster as Sam and Kurt giggled together.

“Like I said Blaine, she tried it on Kurt too.”  Sam noted.

“Did ya’ go for it Kurt?” Blaine asked, head rolling towards Kurt.

“No!” Kurt said insistently and then happened to glance at Quinn who looked pained, “I mean… yah… okay… Quinn’s… okay…. for a girl… but I’m not…. Look.  I’m not having this conversation.”

More laughter and then more drinking.  Kurt enjoyed the feeling of tingling warmth running up and down his fingers and toes.  They felt feather light, and the pain he usually ignored in his back wasn’t even bothering him at all.  Maybe there was something to this drinking thing.  He was definitely a whiskey man if this evening was any indication of how whiskey tasted and felt.  He’d have to look out for the stuff on any further missions they set out on.  At the very least, it would help keep him warm on a cold winter’s night.

“I wish I knew how it ended….”  Sam grunted, once again speaking to the ceiling.

“How what ended?”

“The video game I was playing when all the shit hit the fan.”

Quinn snorted, “Of all the things you want to know… it’s a video game you’re lamenting?”

He lifted his head to look at her, “Well… yah.  I mean, I was at my cousin’s place when The Tides happened.  My family was all back in California so I can safely assume what happened to them…. and I always told them I loved them whenever we parted ways…. so… I mean, I miss them, but I don’t regret not saying anything to them or stuff… but it was a really intense game and had a good story….”

Quinn rolled her eyes and looked back away as Sam continued on, speaking a language foreign to Kurt as he described the game mechanics and plot.  Blaine however seemed to understand and as he nodded and asked Sam questions about the game, Kurt watched him.

Blaine came to him now for weekly shaves, citing that Kurt did such a good job when he was sick and he didn’t want to appear to be an unsightly neighbour and reduce property values.  Kurt, amused by it, agreed and was now using up his razors like he never had before to keep Blaine’s coarse dark hair at bay.  The effect was worth it though.  Clean shaved, or even with a little bit of stubble, Blaine was much easier on the eyes.  It drew the focus away from his chin to his eyes, which Kurt could never seem to get enough of.  

At some point though, he must have lost himself in his mind because the next thing he noticed was honey amber eyes looking back at him inquisitively.  “You okay Kurt?”

He shook it off, “Yeah… yeah…. just.  I should probably nap before watch.”

“Look’s like someone beat you to it.”  Sam noted, pointing with his bottle towards Quinn who had fallen asleep in her chair and making small, breathy snores.

They chuckled, though quietly, and Kurt sat up - and then immediately sat down when his vision started swirling and his balance was off.  “Whoa…”

The other boys chuckled and then Blaine rolled himself backwards off the couch and stood up in front of Kurt, offering him a hand, “Come on.  I’ll help you.”

“Don’t need help….”  Kurt huffed indignantly and pushed himself up again.  It was a mistake though because as soon as he did it, the waves of vertigo hit him again and he swooned in place. “Oh…”

Blaine’s hands immediately reached to steady Kurt, one under each of his elbows.  “Easy.  Come on.”

Kurt let himself be led, slowly, down the hall and up the stairs, hoping that Sam would forget the sight by morning.   Everything seemed so much more fuzzy now that he was on his feet.  Walls seemed to blend into the carpets and Kurt found himself intensely interested in his own feet as he stared at them the entire trip to the room.

“I used to have nicer shoes….”  He lamented to Blaine, leaning against the doorway when Blaine opened the room for them.

“I have to admit… never looked at your feet.”  Blaine murmured, once again taking Kurt by the elbow to take him inside the room.

“I’ve looked at yours.  Your shoes are nasty.”

“Well you can help me find new ones tomorrow.”

“Your naked toes are kind of cute though.”

Blaine flushed and Kurt giggled at the sight,  sitting down with a flop on the edge of the bed.  

“Right… I had almost forgot that you’ve seen me naked.”

“All of you!”  

Something about it became insanely funny to Kurt and he erupted into mad giggles, having to choke for breath as he tried to regain some semblance of composure.

“Am I that ugly naked?”

“Pfft!”  Kurt laid back on the bed, stretching himself out and looking up at Blaine who continued to stand and look at him awkwardly.  “S’ok… you can sleep by me.  I’m too warm to care.”

Blaine hesitated for a moment, then slipped off his jacket and shoes, and, as an afterthought, his socks before climbing over Kurt and taking the spot by the wall.

“Aw.  You made your feet naked for me.” Kurt drawled, looking down his nose at the end of the bed.

“Least I could do.”  Blaine murmured into the pillow.  “Mmm… this kid had a nice bed.”

Without considering why or what the point was, Kurt kicked off his own shoes and slipped off his own socks using his toes, wiggling them once they were freed.  “There.  Now you can see my naked feet and we’ll be even.”

Blaine laughed softly, rolling onto his side so he was looking towards Kurt, “I don’t think that makes us even.”

“Well I’m not about to get out of my knickers for you so don’t get excited.”

Blaine chuckled again, “Knickers… that’s a funny word.”

“Know what else is a funny word?”  Kurt asked, rolling himself on his own side to face Blaine.  “Spatula.  Spa-tuuuuu-laaaa.  Feels funny on the tongue.”

Blaine laughed again, “That why you’re not a chef?”

“Damn straight.”  Kurt huffed.  “Plus, until the kitchen has a supply line with more fruits I like, I don’t want to cook in there.”

“Mmm… what kind of fruits you like?”

Kurt didn’t have to think about it.  “Peaches… pomegranates…. banana’s…. cherries… I have been craving a good cherry cheesecake for ten years.”

Blaine made a small yawn, then smiled sweetly towards Kurt, “I’ll figure out how to make you one….”

Kurt smiled back, but didn’t respond.  There was no way Blaine could make good on that, and it wouldn’t do to entertain the thought, and yet he didn’t feel like he could quash Blaine’s offerings with reality.  Instead he just watched Blaine stare at him until black lashes fluttered shut and a familiar soft snoring began.

Kurt watched him for awhile.  When Blaine had been sick, he only got close to him in hurried rushes to keep him clean and fed and watered so he could avoid germ exposure.  Now, with nothing to threaten his immune system, and a feeling of complete inhibition floating over him, he stared.  Noted how rosy and plump Blaine’s lips were, or how his cheekbones peeked whenever he took a breath.

He could kiss those lips and no one would ever know the difference.

With a sharp snap of his head, he rolled away from Blaine then.  He couldn’t think things like that.  That wasn’t him.  That wasn’t right.  Kurt focused on sleeping, and was happy to find that sleep overtook him once he managed to let the blur in his mind take over and fizzle out any thoughts he had left in his head.

When Kurt woke next, it was because a body was pressed tightly against his back.  His first instinct was panic and he shot up, forgetting the alcohol in his system.  With a moan he dropped back on his elbows as fog filled his vision and was then replaced by a set of amber eyes that looked at him with worry.

“Kurt?”

He had been snuggling with Blaine… or rather, Blaine had been snuggling him in his sleep.  They hadn’t been sleeping long given that the moonlight was still streaming light in at close to the same angle it had been when he remembered walking into this room - even though that memory was blurry as hell in his head.  

“I… ah…. you were…”

“You’re gorgeous.”

The words caught Kurt off guard, and the first thing he noticed, aside from the sudden intense pounding in his chest, was Blaine’s tongue slipping between his own rosy lips to lick them.  He could kiss those lips… he could….

Blaine was the one who closed the gap while Kurt was still focusing on those lips and whether it’s the alcohol still strumming through his veins, or Kurt just accepting life and wanting to get past surviving, he slammed himself, and his lips back against Blaine’s.  The kiss is sloppy, but so much better than the one forced on him years ago.  Blaine tastes sweet beyond the flavour of the drink he had been consuming earlier and even the stubble rubbing back against Kurt’s face doesn’t stop him.  It’s only when he needs to breath does he pull back and look at Blaine in, shock settling into him as he recognized what he had just done.

“I…. you….”

“In the moonlight… you’re gorgeous.  You’re always gorgeous… but especially right now…”  Blaine rambled.  He looked at Kurt’s lips as he spoke and Kurt couldn’t help but notice how the honey eyes had become overtaken by Blaine’s pupils, blown black with lust.

Would he ever get this chance again?  

Keeping his eyes locked on Blaine, until Blaine is looking back at his own eyes, Kurt peeled off his jacket, and then pulled his shirt over his head.  He can do this, he says to himself, he can take this opportunity to live.  

As soon as the shirt is off, Blaine’s lips seemed to be magnetized to his chest and Kurt is kissed in places he never even knew were sensitive without any warning.  With a mewl, Kurt fell back on the bed, eyes winched shut, letting Blaine take charge.  Kurt didn’t know what to do, but Blaine must.  Blaine, so worldly, must have been with other men before and could show Kurt what he had been missing out on.

The thought didn’t unsettle Kurt, because, aside from the fact that the alcohol was still coursing through him and making him completely forgiving of everything that ever was and ever could be, all his attention was all focused on Blaine’s mouth and what it was doing to his nipple, sucked in between those lips that had just been connected with his own while Blaine’s tongue dabbed at it inside his mouth.  Blaine’s hands wander meanwhile, first grazing lightly down Kurt’s sides which makes him shudder and then Blaine’s thumbs tuck into the waistband of Kurt’s pants. All Kurt does is lift his hips to allow Blaine to pull off the last of his clothing, leaving him there, exposed in the moonlight, to the first person who has seen him naked in over a decade.  

It’s then when Blaine gives him a bit of reprieve and his lips leave Kurt’s chest allowing Kurt to unclench his eyes and look at Blaine, who sits straddled over him and looks down at his naked body.  It struck Kurt then that he didn’t know how he would look to anyone else, and a bit of self consciousness creeps through his alcohol induced haze and he starts to worry about how he must look, or if there’s something wrong with him.  Would Blaine see all his scars, gathered from years of hunting and running missions?  Would he notice how pale Kurt was?  Maybe he would see that, no matter how much Kurt tried to eat, his ribs always protruded over his stomach.  It isn’t until Blaine speaks again that Kurt is able to allow his arousal to dominate his mind again.

“So gorgeous…”

Those two words relieve Kurt like nothing else and he exhales just as Blaine pulls off his own shirt and tosses it to the floor atop Kurt’s discarded items.  Maybe it is the moonlight, but Blaine looks more than radiant with that light shining on him, accenting all his muscle tone and making the fuzz on his chest and stomach glimmer.  Kurt reaches out to trace the line of hair that runs down Blaine’s stomach to the edge of his pants.

“There’s lubricant in the night table.”  Kurt murmurs.  It’s nothing he thought he’d ever say, and the suggestion behind it leaves nothing to question.  He’s absolutely taking advantage of the moment and living life to the fullest - sex included.

Blaine nods, eyes never straying from Kurt as he unzips his jeans and peels off both his pants and boxers together, adding them to the pile before leaning over and opening the drawer.  Kurt couldn’t help but smirk when he saw Blaine grimace briefly upon being faced with those dirty magazines from earlier, but he managed to grab the lube and shut the drawer without losing his erection, which bobs with each of his movements and which Kurt can’t seem to stop looking at.  So different from his own, but perfect on Blaine.  

“Roll over.”

Kurt obeys, moving himself under Blaine’s straddled thighs and exposing more of his naked self to this man. He didn’t know how or when it was decided he would be bottoming, but he was glad that, for once, someone else was taking charge.  

The position makes it hard for Kurt to see what’s happening, but he doesn’t get left feeling curious for long because he feels something cold and slimy rubbing against his exposed pucker.  This is it.  He won’t be a virgin anymore.  Taking in an anxious breath, he waited for the barrier to be breached.

Except when it is and Blaine is pushing himself in, Kurt isn’t truly prepared and neither is the tight ring of muscle.  It doesn’t feel good and Kurt let out a small, sharp cry he had no way to keep inside.  How could it feel good?  Everything stretched and he felt like he was going to be torn into pieces right up from his spine.  There was no time for his body to adjust and Blaine’s hands grip him tightly on his hips, holding his already frozen body in place as he pulled out slowly and then pushed back in again with a groan.  The second breach just as painful as the first.  Then the third.  Then the fourth.

Kurt bit down on his lower lip and kept himself braced, his knuckles white as his hands gripped the pillow with brutal force.  He waited and hoped that it would be over soon, and then, it starts to hurt less and Blaine’s cock brushes up against something inside of Kurt that seems to burn pleasure back into his body.  After a minute, the pain subsides and the pleasure overwhelms him enough that Kurt begins to groan along with Blaine and cry out words he can’t even process the meaning of as they fly from his mouth.  

“Shh… you’ll wake someone….” Blaine whispers above him between the slaps of his balls against Kurt.

The idea of someone coming in to ruin this makes Kurt whine and he muffled his mouth on the pillow.  At some point his hips had began rolling back against Blaine to meet his every thrust and the friction of his own cock rubbing against the mattress gave Kurt the friction necessary to come, crying out into the bed as he did and making a sticky mess between him and the sheet he was on.

Whether it’s the sound of Kurt orgasming, or just the natural time for it, Blaine pounds himself in one last time and keens.  His fingers dig into Kurt’s hips as he holds himself inside of Kurt and releases.  There is no condom, no way to protect them from any diseases either one might carry, and Kurt doesn’t care.  The warmth and bliss that runs through him in that moment make him absolutely oblivious to anything except his own contentment.  He doesn’t care, and it’s a wonderful feeling.

When Blaine pulls himself out after a moment, Kurt hisses.  For feeling so horrid in the beginning, he doesn’t want to lose the fullness he quickly became accustomed to.  The air is cold as it seeps into him and his hips and ass seem positively frigid without Blaine attached to them.  

Blaine grabbed a T-shirt from one of the drawers after getting up and off Kurt, and went about cleaning Kurt off - so delicate in his motions that Kurt ended up falling asleep again.  It wasn’t until a couple hours later that Kurt woke up again, a blanket had been drawn up over him and a warm body pressed against him again.  That’s when Kurt began to inwardly panic.

At first, it’s just because there’s an arm around him again - though this time he isn’t spooked by it.  The arm does remind him though of what he’s done, and he knows, without any shadow of a doubt then, that he’s an easy drunk.  He let down all his walls he had worked so hard on keeping up and there was no going back.  He had lost all his inhibitions and paid for it.

Then it’s the fact that he feels Blaine naked against him.  Every single coarse curly hair on the man is making Kurt itchy all pressed against him.  On top of that, he can’t help but feel disgusted by the dried come that had snuck out of his ass and dried between his legs.  It made him feel used.  

Kurt carefully took Blaine’s arm and lifted it up, sneaking out of the other man’s hold despite Blaine’s sleep induced attempts to draw him back with grabby fingers.  Kurt slowly got dressed and rubbed the grit off on his legs. If the ache in his head wasn’t bad enough, the ache in his ass was worse.  It feels like a stab going straight up his spine and all the muscles he never knew existed in his ass throbbed intensely.  

He snuck out of the bedroom, and tiptoed down the stairs.  Sam and Quinn were still on the chair and couch down there respectively, though both were asleep. He passed by them to go into the kitchen, which faces the front yard and is where Santana was keeping watch.

“So, curls took the stick out of your ass and replaced it with his own huh?” She mused, lips twitching up into a knowing smirk as she took note of him and slipped off the counter where she had been watching through the window.

“Oh god….”

She snickered and gave him a pat on the shoulder as she passed by, “Don’t worry Hummel.  The other two were too drunk to hear your moans of ‘Oh god!  Oh yes!  More!’ that I had the pleasure of listening to, and I won’t tell anyone.  Don’t want your reputation as a frigid bitch to be ruined.”  

Kurt didn’t say anything in response.  The only thing worse than having had sex like that was that Santana listened in, and he had nothing to say in his defense.  It was an odd blend of grief, guilt, and regret that he felt, and he didn’t know which one to address first - so he dealt with the insistent pounding in his temples by grabbing a water bottle and drinking it all down.  He heard that washing out the alcohol helps with a hangover, and since this is his first real hangover, he was eager for any relief.  

What would his dad say about it?  That’s Kurt’s next worry as he sat up on the counter, keeping his bow at his side and not readied in both hands for the first time since he’s ever done a watch.  His body ached, and he didn’t really trust that he could make a clean shot then and there given his state, but he wasn’t about to ask Santana to come back and watch for him, nor would he risk waking Quinn and dealing with her well known morning angst.  Sam and Blaine couldn’t do watch - they’re both still newbies for scavenging, and Kurt wasn’t sure he could handle talking to Blaine. So Kurt sucked it up and kept his bleary eyes on the world outside, watching with zombie like reverie as the sun rises over the horizon.  He has never wanted sleep more than he wants it then.

And his head.  Between the thudding of his hangover, that makes every small movement feel like his brain is being slapped against his skull, he now had to address the repercussions of his drunken debacle.  His dad wouldn’t have been proud.  He knows that without question.  His dad would have told him that people shouldn’t connect in that way unless they love one another.  His dad, who he misses more then than he has in a long time.  He needs his dad to talk to.  He needs his dad to listen to him.

Kurt can’t help it when his eyes teared up, and if anyone came in then, he would blame it on the hangover.  The truth, however, is much more sobering.  He’s let himself down.  He gave into something that moron Karofsky said combined with the line blurring effects of alcohol.  He gave into living - or what he thought was living in his drunken haze.  That wasn’t living.  That was a bit of pleasure at the cost of a lot of self respect.   He could have gone on without experiencing that and been none the wiser.  Now he would have to figure out how to act around Blaine, and pray to some god he didn’t even believe in that Santana was actually honest about keeping her mouth shut.  

And he’s definitely never touching alcohol again.

  
  
  



	11. Chapter 10: The Sighting

_**“A drop of water, if it could write out its own history, would explain the universe to us.” -Lucy Larcom** _

Kurt heard Blaine approach well before the curly haired man made himself known.  Kurt knew the sound of his footfalls, could hear Blaine’s breath and knew from his time in Kurt’s cabin the tempo of his breathing.  

Still in the kitchen, and looking outside as he remained on watch, Kurt’s headache hadn’t lessened since he had come downstairs, nor had the ache in his backside for that matter.  What had changed was his self loathing had only increased and he wished he could just fade into the background and hide himself away until he was more capable of dealing with his emotions.

He couldn’t though, and now he would have to speak to Blaine even though he wasn’t ready to.

Blaine hovered nearby for a moment, and Kurt pointedly did not turn his attention to him in that time, feigning ignorance of his presence.  It was easier that way.  He didn’t have to meet Blaine’s eyes or let Blaine see the burning in his cheeks.

“Is.. your head pounding as bad as mine?” Blaine finally said by means of letting Kurt know he was there.

Kurt made a noncommittal grunt in response, keeping his eyes locked where they were.  He was becoming very familiar with the outline of the house across the street, but it was better than having to face something actually scary behind him.

He heard a shuffling behind him as Blaine shuffled from one foot to the other and then uttered meekly, “I’m sorry Kurt… I was drunk and much too rough….”

Whether or not Blaine had been rough, Kurt didn’t know.  He didn’t know because it had been the first time he’d ever been with anyone else, and now he knew Blaine was more experienced than he was because Blaine at least seemed to know that it was rough.  That wasn’t the issue though.

“It was a mistake.” Kurt deadpanned.

“Kurt….”

“I’m on watch.”

“If I could just talk to you about -”

“On watch.”

“Well maybe -”

Kurt snapped his head right around then, eyes protruding and red, nostrils flared, and face flushed.

“Don’t you get it?  I don’t want to talk about it!  It was a mistake.  A fucking terrible mistake.  We are NOT talking about it.  Now leave me the hell alone!”

Blaine took a step back, and now Kurt could see that Blaine’s own eyes were just as bagged and red as his own must be.  As Blaine’s chin lowered to his chest and he let out a long, low sigh, Kurt then was able to watch Blaine’s back as he walked out the door in defeat.

A new pain added itself to Kurt’s list of qualms - a numbness in his chest.  He replayed the scene that had just unfolded between them and could only hate himself more.  He didn’t know what he would have said or done differently had he the ability to go back in time to change things, but he knew instinctively he had been wrong in what he had done.  

To add to it all, Blaine confirmed what he already knew what must be true.  They had sex because they were drunk and for no other reason.  Blaine didn’t find Kurt gorgeous any more than Kurt found Blaine to be trustworthy.  There had been nothing romantic at all about the night before and Kurt imagined it probably resembled some B-grade porno flick the way it played out, making him feel sick to his stomach.  

It was definitely not the idyllic way he expected to have his first intimate encounter.  There was no gentle touches or extensive foreplay.  No shared smiles or tender loving words.  It was just quick, rough, and needy.  It would be how Kurt would forever distinguish lust from love, with the experience from last night definitely defining the most basic of lustful pursuits.

And now it was just another notch on his list of things he regretted in life.

Quinn was the next one to walk into the kitchen, her footsteps just as distinct - a quick clack made with each step.  She made herself known right away.

“Well you look like shit.”

Kurt didn’t even bother to turn her way.  If she thought he looked terrible from a side profile, he knew he would look downright horrid face on.  “Thanks.”

“No.  Really.  You look like you were run over by a stampede of angry horses.”

“I get it Quinn.”

“You ever consider getting laid?  At the very least it would might make you look less grumpy.”

Kurt’s grip around his bow became tighter, as did the muscles of his throat as he swallowed back all the saliva in his mouth.  Did she know too?  Did she hear it or did Santana already go back on her word?  Or maybe Quinn truly didn’t know and just happened to make the worst possible comment at the moment.

“Lay off Quinn.  He had too much of the sauce last night.” Santana’s voice sang out from the living room.

Quinn huffed, “Well he shouldn’t drink it if he can’t handle it.”  She left the room then, thankfully leaving Kurt alone again to try and unfurl his fingers from his bow before he gave himself a splinter.  In the next room, he could hear murmured conversation, Sam’s voice included too now, and knew that everyone was up.  Hopefully they could all just have their breakfast and get on the move so Kurt would have something to do other than to stare at nothing and stew.

Santana brought him breakfast shortly thereafter, setting it on the counter before him.  “Should I even ask why you’re pissy or can I just assume that the sex was bad and you have a hangover.”

“I really don’t want to talk about it Santana….”

“Whatever princess.  Just eat then.  We’ll leave once we’re all done.”

At least the breakfast had some dried strawberries among the dry oats he had to chew on.

They left their temporary home, which was in reality much more comfortable than what most of them lived in back at the community, and began touring the town, stopping in each and every house to discover what treasures they could.

“Man you guys are organized.” Kurt heard Blaine comment at one point.

It was true.  They had a saddlebag dedicated to things they would bring to the clinic, a bag dedicated to any arms and ammunition they found (which had always been few and far between since that was the first thing people seemed to bring with them when they abandoned their homes), a bag for canned and boxed food that still might be good, a bag for any technical or mechanical things they could use (replacement pieces for the generators and motors they had, WD-40, and the like), and a bag for things that might trade well (like feminine hygiene products, make-up, and razors).  Five of them, five dedicated saddlebags.

Anything they wanted for themselves had to go into their own backpacks - most of which ended up being clothing and hygiene items on any given trip, with the occasional book in the mix.  Not everyone bothered with reading anymore, and so Kurt was the defacto contributor to the library room, with the exception of how-to books which had been their main source of how to farm and live off the land in the early days of the community.

Kurt otherwise ignored the rest of the group for most of the day, always staying a little further back than everyone else.  He had already gone through his water ration for the day in an attempt to flush the headache out of him, and it had helped to take the edge off, but he was still sore in the temples and aching all over.

Especially down below.  A persevering reminder of how easy he had been the night before.

It was midday and their bags were all filled to the brim when he heard Santana chastising Blaine up ahead.

“It’s useless, don’t bother with it.”

“But I could -”

“Leave it.  Your pack is full.”

When they left the desk they had been looking over, Kurt immediately knew what Blaine had been about to grab.  A small white device, clearly an old smartphone sat on the desk.  Kurt ran his fingers over it and then quickly grabbed the item and slipped it into the front pocket of his coat.  He didn’t even need to think about it.  

He paid attention after that, and saw Blaine give several longing looks towards other things ahead of him, and each and every time Kurt was able to find a phone or old music player where Blaine had been looking.  By the end of the day, he didn’t have any more pockets left to fill.

“We should spend another night here.” Quinn stated, watching the sun go down in the horizon.

“We should leave now and set up a camp to sleep at on the way back.” Kurt retorted.  He had no desire to spend another night in this town and have to figure out room arrangements which he wouldn’t be adhering to anyhow.

“Vote then.” Santana directed.  There was another reason why they almost always went in odd numbers on scavenging missions.

3-2 in favour of leaving.  Santana and Blaine voting along with Kurt.  He knew he’d always have Santana ready to get back to Brittany, and Blaine, he could only assume, wanted to avoid anymore awkwardness as well.

They packed up the horses and set off, Kurt inwardly cursing himself right away for suggesting they leave that night.  If his rear was hurting while they walked around town, it was absolutely on fire having to ride a horse.  He bit his lip though and ensured he took lead.  That way at least he could try different riding positions without anyone questioning him in the attempt to find a way to ride comfortably.

The best way he found, was a standing in his stirrups position that had his calves aching by the time they made camp.  

“Quinn can take watch since she slept so well.”  Santana told them, more of an order than a suggestive given the bite in her tone.  Kurt, for once, didn’t argue and once they had eaten, he found a place to lay down several yards away from everyone else before dropping into a quick and easy sleep.

His dreams were, as always, littered with nonsense.  Dancing and singing on a stage, his mom and dad in the audience clapping wildly for him, drinking hot chocolate inside his old home after going sledding on a cold winter’s day, seeing the Eiffel tower for the first time and posing for pictures in front of it.

And in every one of the dreams, there were those damned honey eyes on him.  In the audience clapping with his parents, cuddled beside him and sipping his own cocoa, or the one taking the photos in France.  Kurt couldn’t even escape him in his dreams.

When it finally came that Kurt was dancing on stage with Blaine, he made himself wake up.

Everyone else was still asleep, so Kurt used that time to empty every pocket of the devices he had collected and tucked them into his backpack.  He had left room in his backpack, even discarding his old boots and putting on newer ones he had found instead of taking them along with him, just in case.  

“Kurt…?”

He was zipping up when he heard Blaine’s groggy voice and sighed, turning in place.  His anger had been spent throughout the day and now he was just tired and sad.  “What?”

Blaine was sitting up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes before looking up towards Kurt.  “Can we please just talk?  I gave you space all day but -”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Stop interrupting me.”  Blaine hissed through his teeth and stood.  It was the first time Blaine had ever been contrary and surprised Kurt, who clamped his own mouth shut.  “I get that you think I’m a mistake, but we’ve got to coexist until spring so maybe you could just try being civil for a moment and talk to me like an adult.”

Kurt felt his cheeks burn and he looked toward Blaine blankly.  He was right.  “Okay… but.. not here.”

“Fine.  Lead the way.” Blaine grunted, leaving a space of several feet between himself and Kurt as Kurt led him well out of earshot of the rest of the group.  Sleeping or not, he didn’t want to share this discussion with them.

Clasping his hands behind his back, Kurt sedately nodded towards Blaine.  

“Okay, first of all, you might think it was a mistake, but you need to know, the only thing I think was a mistake was the fact that it was alcohol induced and that I wasn’t… kind.  I feel really awful about that… but I don’t just throw myself around like some kind of floozy Kurt.  I am, and have been, genuinely attracted to you.”

A rush of adrenaline flooded Kurt’s body with that admission, and he had no where to channel the sudden urge to run and hide.  His breath held for a moment as his eyebrows lifted, looking towards Blaine with the same blankness he had earlier.

Blaine looked back, waiting for a response he wasn’t getting before speaking up again.  

“And I get that you might not share that attraction… and last night was a mistake to you because you did something you otherwise wouldn’t have, but I need to be honest with you about how I feel because you deserve that at least.  To know how I feel.. however ridiculous it might be.”

“It is ridiculous.” Kurt muttered, his lips as tense as the rest of him as the words seemed to float through them.

“Well… anyhow… I just want you to know I am sorry… and I hope we can still be friends.”

Is that what they were?  Kurt pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers and clenched his eyes shut as he processed the information.

“Look… I’m not used to interacting with others as much as I have been… with you anyhow… can you just give me some more time to think?  I’m just… not good at this shit Blaine.”

“Of course…” Blaine said quickly, and Kurt noticed his face has brightened noticeably when he looked back to him.  “... I’d say take all the time you need but I’m afraid, that with you, I’d never get a response.”

Kurt’s mouth pulled into a tight lipped smile and he nodded.  What exactly he was supposed to be thinking about he wasn’t quite sure - and that was part of his problem.  The status of their friendship?  His willingness to forgive Blaine for what Blaine perceived as wrongdoing?  Kurt didn’t know, and that was what he really needed time to think on.

“Anyhow… that’s it…”  Blaine muttered, digging the toe of his shoe into the dirt.  “Anything you want to say?”

“No.”

“I’m somehow not surprised.”  Blaine said with a chuckle.  “Can we at least be civil with one another?  I’ll promise not to freak out on you if you don’t freak out on me?”

“That depends…”  Kurt said, lifting his chin up as he looked towards Blaine, letting those damned honey eyes dig a little into his own head, “... you going to get me drunk and bend me over again?”

Another chuckle and a shake of Blaine’s head, “No.  Definitely not.”

“Good.  Civility it is then.”

They returned to where the rest of the group was sleeping and got the horses watered and fed in silence.  By the time the sun was creeping over the horizon, everyone had awaken and eaten and it was time to move again.

The time spent on the saddle, leading the group home did nothing to help Kurt answer the questions or come any closer to deciding how to handle things.  He knew he couldn’t be snappy about it, even though that was his gut reaction to dealing with it.  If only there was a book on the subject he could refer to, some Idiot or Dummy's guide to dealing with drunken one night stands in post-civilized society.

Of course his dad would have had a well thought out and brilliant answer, making him consider thoughts and feelings he didn’t even know he had, unfortunately though, Kurt wasn’t able to channel his father’s voice, much less his wisdom during the ride home.   

A glint in the distance, only a few kilometers out of the community caught his eye and he pulled the reins on his horse, bringing it to a sharp shop.  He squinted, trying to figure out if it was just the sun hitting something reflective, or something else and pulled the binoculars off the case they were kept in on his belt.

Something… or someone… was in the tree’s up ahead.  He could make out a leg but not much else.  Whoever they were, they weren’t moving so he could see anything more than a slender calf, and what was truly odd was that that calf was naked in this cold weather.  The feet themselves couldn’t be seen because they were buried in snow.  

He held position, keeping his focus on the leg ahead of them through his binoculars and when he heard the rest of the group approaching, he held up an arm - the sign that he had something in sights and to remain quiet.  

Santana and Quinn held their reins out to Sam and Blaine as they got close and hopped of their own horses and pulled out their own binoculars to determine what Kurt was looking at.

“What the fuck… who the hell is out in the snow without clothing….” Santana whispered with a grumble.

“Maybe mad old’ Kevin from the home got loose.” Quinn said, referencing a senile old man who lived in the old brothel and was known for shedding his clothing and taking a run through town on more than one occasion.

“We’ve all seen Kevin… whomever that is isn’t hairy enough to be him.” Kurt murmured, wishing whoever was there would set into view.

Blaine slipped off his horse and held a hand out towards Quinn, who was the closest to him, “May I see?”

She looked over the edge of her binoculars at Blaine, brow bunching as she silently questioned his reasoning, but handed over the binoculars which he quickly put to his own eyes and followed Kurt and Santana’s sight line with.

“Might be a shifter….” He uttered quietly, or at least more quietly than the gulp of his throat which followed.

“A shifter?”

“An Other than can change shape… they don’t wear a lot of clothes… if any.  Interferes with the change.”

“Jesus….”

Kurt couldn’t wait any longer for the figure to move on it’s own.  He slipped off his horse and started stalking to the side a few meters, everyone else watching him with nervous eyes as he crouched low and slipped his bow off his back before pulling the binoculars back to his eyes.

From this point, he could see more of the figure by the tree.  He… she?  was tall, willowy, and so much more pale than Kurt had ever been.  The sharply pointed ears gave no question as to what he was looking at, nor did the inhuman shock of long blue hair which ran down its back and around its torso - so light and fluffy it almost looked like feathers against it’s body.  He held his breath and his heart stilled.  This was the first time, in person, he had seen an Other.

It seemed to be unaware of their presence, picking cones off the tree it was flushed against and sniffing them one by one.  The cones ended up discarded to the ground once they were done being smelled, at least until it seemed to find one that pleased it and popped it into its thin lips and began chewing it.

Taking his eyes away from his binoculars, Kurt looked over at his group, all impatiently looking right back at him.  He gave a nod towards Blaine, confirming what Blaine had suggested which set all the rest of the group, save for Sam who was now holding the reins of all their horses, creeping to join Kurt’s side and look through the binoculars for themselves.

“God… look at that hair…” Quinn whispered.

“Forget his hair, look at her tits!” Santana exclaimed in her hushed state.

Kurt looked again.  Sure enough, under the feathery hair, was a set of developed breasts.  So it was a female Other.  

Blaine borrowed Quinn’s binoculars again and watched for a moment before handing them back.  “She’s just eating.  She’ll probably go once she’s full.”

Kurt returned to watching the alien species.  She was completely enrapturing.  Every movement lined with grace - so fluid and purposeful.  Those ears… how anyone could think Kurt was one of them when his ears only peeked a little was a mystery because her ear tips seemed to stop peeking at the top of her head and fall out to the side a little.  Even the ears on Blaine’s chain weren’t a good indicator of how long those ears really were since they had dried and shriveled up - and from half-breeds for that matter.

At one point she turned towards them, and all at once they sucked in their breaths and held them in their mouths.  Eyes so blue they were clear in the lens of their binoculars and lashes that feathered out themselves in the same deep blue as her hair.  Everything about her screamed magical, and if that wasn’t enough, a shimmer and a tremble had her morphing before their eyes into a large blue bird which rapidly hopped up into the air and took out in the sky over them.

“Holy…..”

“Fuck…..”

“They’re something aren’t they?” Blaine murmured.  He hadn’t even been watching since Quinn, Santana, and Kurt had been held captive by the sight through their binoculars, yet he seemed to know exactly what they had seen.

“How do they even….?”

“Magic.” Blaine said simply.

Quinn shook her head, “So wait… they can change into animals?  How did we not know this?”

Blaine stood and moved back to the horses then, the rest of them following him and eagerly waiting for answers.  In that moment, it was Blaine who held all the secrets and had the answers they wanted, and that made him quite popular very quickly.

“They all have powers….”  Blaine finally said with a shrug, pulling himself back up onto his horse and thanking Sam for holding the reins.

“What kind of powers?” Santana demanded to know.

“How is it that you all don’t know these things?” Blaine queried with a furrowed brow, looking towards Santana and Quinn who were blocking his horse’s path.  “Everyone knows this stuff…”

“We don’t.”

Blaine sighed and shook his head, “There are those that change into animals…. like that one you just saw….”

“Any animal?”

“Any animal… including some that have been extinct or thought to be fantasy until ten years ago….”

“Shit…”  Santana looked out over the snow, “We should start shooting down those dogs that come by the town…”

Blaine snorted at that, “Don’t.  For starters… they don’t lose weight when they change.  You saw that once change right?  Did it look like a regular sized bird?”

“Well…. no…”

Kurt was sure he was just seeing things when he saw how big that bird was the Other changed into… but if they didn’t lose weight, that meant it was just one huge bird….

“Secondly… dogs really are mankind’s best friend.  If we didn’t use the quads my group would keep a good lot of them.  Dogs are good early warning systems for the presence of Others and will protect you against them.”

Santana’s tune quickly changed.  “I’m going to adopt me some of those dogs…”

Blaine smirked and just nodded, “Anyhow… I’ll be happy to share everything I know about them…. I didn’t realise you all didn’t know that much about their magic, but maybe we could get back to town first?”

Begrudgingly, if only because they wanted to know everything as quickly as possible, Quinn and Santana got on their horses.  While Blaine had been talking, Kurt had gotten on his, not wanting to seem as insistent as the girls, especially given the events of the previous night, though he definitely had kept an ear open.

The remainder of the ride was rushed.  Everyone was eager to get back and Sam had the girls recounting what they had seen down to the last detail several times over by the time they returned.  Without waiting, Santana told Mercedes to send a call out for all the guards to have an urgent meeting in the kitchen and then promptly told Blaine he was coming.

“You’re going to tell us EVERYTHING.”

It seemed to make Blaine nervous, though he nodded in compliance.

It was the first time Kurt had ever seen Santana wait around after returning home from a scavenging instead of rushing to find Brittany.  Workers came to deliver the specific saddle bags to their intended locations and, individually, the group all kept their own packs affixed to their backs as Santana was leaving them no time to make a run home before this meeting began.  Quinn also stuck around, even though she wasn’t technically a guard but a worker, arguing that because she hunted so much, the information would be invaluable if she came across one of them again.

Before long, they were in the kitchen, crowded with guards and those who were curious enough to sneak in.  

“We saw an Other.” Santana announced to the group who quickly fell into chaos with a range of reactions from shocked silence to panicked screams, making Santana have to yell several times to get everyone’s attention again.

“It didn’t see us.  It was eating and then changed into a bird and flew off.”

Now the reactions were more hushed, though excited whispers were springing up all around Kurt.   It can’t be so said some, while others questioned how amazing that would be. Kurt tuned them out, turning his focus back on Santana, standing so firm and dominant at the front of the room with Blaine, meekly aside her, head hung.

“Blaine here knew all about it…. guessed right on what it was and everything.  Apparently he knows a shitload more than we do - so he’s going to tell us everything he knows…”

Eyes all flocked to Blaine then, who made a nervous little chuckle and looked up.  “Well….”

And it began, all mouths shut and heads looking straight to him for the next hour as he talked about the type of magic he’d seen over the years.  Changelings that could take the form of an animal, true vampires that lived off the flesh of others and dominated the night, Others who had mastery power over elements like ice or wind, even magic that formed as music or color was described to the best of his ability.  Periodically someone would ask a question, though those questions lessened over time as there were something things Blaine simply couldn’t explain.

How did they get their magic?  
How do they control it?  
How do you stop it?

Blaine told them about things different groups did to protect themselves.  Dogs were brought up again, as well as minimising damage to the local environment - apparently some Others were attracted to sites of destruction.  Staying away from major waterways was mentioned - the one thing they already knew, as well as avoiding the underground.  Old mines were death traps he explained, claiming that Others had apparently trapped humans in them never to be seen again.  Kurt was suddenly quite glad he hadn’t ever learned how to mine.

It went on.  Blaine described how he had seen a whole army of them marching near what had been Seattle once.  He and his ground had to hide for over a day under leaves as they marched by, unable to eat or relieve themselves or even sleep.  He had seen the changelings - birds, cats, horses, a unicorn once even.  

He told them, that through binoculars of his own, that he had seen one of their vampires tear apart a human man until nothing was left but a splatter on the ground and a pile of bones.

“How are any humans even still alive against things that can do that….” One man uttered quietly - though in the silence that it was spoken in, all could hear him.

“They just don’t seem concerned about wiping us completely off the planet….” Blaine said with another shrug, “At least… not yet… there are some humans they even coexist with…. and have children with.”

Now there were quite a few gasps, save for Kurt who had already heard about half-breeds.  Blaine told them about the small communities where Others and humans lived together and had children.  Some people didn’t seem to know how to respond to that, while others made retching noises.

“I don’t….”  Blaine looked at Santana, “... I don’t know what else I can tell you…”

Santana nodded and looked out over the group.  Technically she wasn’t their leader, but right now she was definitely acting like one.  “Good.  Be prepared for more questions… I’m sure we’ll have some later once we are all able to process this.”

Murmurs of agreement rose up in the crowd, some of which who were already on their way out while others were staying behind and talking quietly amongst themselves.  Blaine looked relieved, his whole demeanor slackening when Kurt peered towards him.  Santana had just left him there, used for his information and no longer of any use - at least not for the moment.  She had Brittany to run off to now.  Quinn left with Noah, the ice between them almost noticeable, and Sam lingered for a bit, probably to see if Mercedes was coming by, before he left.

Kurt took off after Sam, walking with urgency back to his home.  What Blaine had said to them all seemed to float to the back of his head, despite being so important.  He needed to figure out where he stood with Blaine.  Or at least stop thinking about him so constantly that he could get his priorities straight.

The pack was emptied onto his bed and Kurt sorted out the new clothing, razor blades, and soap he had claimed into their places - leaving the small pile of phones and old music players centered on the bed.  What secrets would they hold?  Who did they belong to?  Would they even work still?

Kurt knew he wasn’t going to be able to find out without Blaine’s help, so they got swept to the side as he laid himself in bed, quite happy to drown out his thoughts with sleep.

Dreams of dancing again.  Dreams of unfettered joy.  Dreams of… footsteps?  

No, those were real.  

Without opening his eyes, he woke, and focused on the unfamiliar footfalls.  Too light to be an adults… or at least an adult human.  One of his hands had fallen behind the pelts in his sleep and he balled it into a fist, just in case.

“Mr. Hummel?”

His eyes snapped open and he sat upright slowly, seeing young Beth there, pink flannel pyjamas stuffed into oversized boots and her dark blonde curls pulled into two pigtails.  Her brown eyes set on Kurt.

“Beth.  What are you doing here?”

Her forehead wrinkled and Kurt noticed then the teddy bear she held in her hands that she was fidgeting with, “Well…. Mom and Dad are fighting.”

Kurt sighed and held out his arms to the young girls, finding them rapidly filled with her body as she climbed up into the bed and into his lap, curling up against him.  Even though he had just hugged her the other day, it was an all too otherworldly feeling.  She had definitely grown quite a bit since she had last sat in his lap like this.  

“Is it scaring you?” He asked, making small circles on her back with his hand to try and soothe her.

“Hmm?  No… they fight lots… I’m used to it.”

“Then why are you here Beth?  Don’t you think they’ll worry if they can’t find you?”

She shrugged in his arms, “It’s not the fighting that bugs me.”

“Then what is it?”

She looked up at him, eyes so serious now, “It’s what they do AFTER they fight that bugs me.”

“Huh?”

“Y’know…”  She wrinkled up her nose at the thought and whispered towards him, “The ADULT stuff that makes ‘em happy again.”

Adult stuff…. Kurt thought and then a shock of realization hit him, a blush along with it.  Beth was old enough now to understand what sex was.  Oh god…

She seemed to find his embarrassment amusing, chuckling softly at his reaction, “They won’t notice me gone until morning.  It okay if I just stay here for awhile so I don’t have to listen to ‘em?”

Kurt just nodded.  They would no doubt be furious with him if they noticed her gone and with him, but he could deal with that.  What he couldn’t deal with was walking in on them in the moment to return Beth home.  

“What’re those?” Beth asked of him then, pointing towards the pile of electronics at the end of the bed.

“Ah… well… remnants of the past.  Blaine and I are going to see if we can do anything with them.”

“Blaine….?”

Kurt racked his brains.  Beth had always been taught certain manners, including to always call adults by their last names.  It was really a silly practice in this time and place as last names were only ever useful if there were two or more people with the same first name.  What was bothering Kurt though was that he actually didn’t know Blaine’s last name.

“The guy who lives beside me… the one who came with his friend who’s in the clinic..” Kurt offered as a means of explanation.

“Oh.  You mean Mr. Anderson.”

Blaine Anderson.  It definitely fit him.

She wasn’t helping Kurt not think about him though.

“Right.  Anyhow… if they work, I’ll show you what they can do.  You’ll be amazed.”

“If you say so Mr. Hummel.”  Beth crawled out of his lap then and into the space in his bed beside him.  Funny how he could be so comfortable with her there but not Blaine he thought to himself as he watched her pull a blanket up and over herself.  “Can you sing to me?”

“I haven’t sung to you since you were so much smaller Beth…”

“Please?”

He had a really hard time saying no to those brown eyes, and his mouth was opening before his brain could say no.

You could be my unintended  
Choice to live my life extended  
You could be the one I'll always love  
You could be the one who listens to my deepest inquisitions  
You could be the one I'll always love

It was a song off one of the phones Blaine had, one that had burrowed into his mind despite not being something he might have listened to in his life before The Tides.  Why it came to him now was not something he would have been able to answer.  He watched Beth smile up at him and close her eyes, letting herself become immersed in the song not unlike how he did when he had one of the phones there to listen to.

I'll be there as soon as I can  
But I'm busy mending broken pieces of the life I had before  
First there was the one who challenged  
All my dreams and all my balance  
She could never be as good as you

“S’nice.”  Beth murmured while Kurt sang.  “Haven’t heard this one ‘fore.”

You could be my unintended  
Choice to live my life extended  
You should be the one I'll always love  
I'll be there as soon as I can  
But I'm busy mending broken pieces of the life I had before

He heard Blaine’s footsteps outside then, but kept on singing to Beth, watching her body relax and drift off.  He had probably either woken or, unintentionally, drawn Blaine’s interest by singing.

I'll be there as soon as I can  
But I'm busy mending broken pieces of the life I had before  
Before you

When Blaine came in, slowly opening the door, Kurt put a finger up to his lips and made a nod towards the sleeping little girl in his bed.  A small o formed on Blaine’s lips - quickly understanding why Kurt must have been singing so openly.  He slipped out from the bed and crept towards Blaine, whispering, “Her parents were fighting.”

“Poor thing.” Blaine whispered back, looking over Kurt’s shoulder at Beth before looking back to Kurt. “Your voice…”

“Yeah… sorry.  I used to sing her to sleep when she was a tot and she wanted it again.  Rough I know.”

Blaine quickly shook his head.  “No.  Amazing… Brilliant… Gorgeous.  Definitely not rough.”

The ground became instantly interesting to Kurt as he glanced down.  It was bad enough Blaine was so gracious about his singing voice… but that word again - gorgeous.  All at once the memories of two nights past hit him and he curled his arms around his stomach to try and calm the butterflies fluttering about within him.

“Thanks.”

“Do you want me to maybe… let her parents know she’s here?”

Kurt glanced back at Beth.  It might be a good idea to allay any possible worries they might have.

“Sure… but if they sound like they’re… ah…”  He should be able to say the word dammit, Kurt thought to himself.  He had done it himself now after all.  “... ah… intimate… just leave a note under their door.”

Blaine’s bushy eyebrows crept up his forehead at that, but he nodded and turned to leave without further question, allowing Kurt to breath in his relief and return to the small girl in his bed to cuddle.

Why was cuddling a little girl so much easier than snuggling a grown man he had had sex with?

Why did he think these things when he had a little girl in his bed?  Did that make him some kind of pervert?

Kurt just sighed and tried to put it out of his thoughts, trying to focus on falling back asleep.  Like anytime one tries to focus on sleeping though, it didn’t come easily, and he didn’t manage to fall back asleep until well after he heard Blaine’s footsteps outside on the return to his home after going into town.

His dreams returned him to his fantasy life.  In this iteration he was in a full tuxedo, exceptionally crafted and fitting him like a glove.  He stood on a stage, holding an award, and thanking a faceless crowd of people before him.  He didn’t know what the award was for but he seemed quite pleased to be receiving it.  As he exited the stage, the faceless people all stood for him, their clapping continuing.  Kurt had the feeling that something terrible was about to happen, and sure enough the faceless people all began to melt in front of him.  He screamed, but nothing came out of his mouth, and tried to run but found his feet locked in place.  He was trapped and voiceless and so completely terrified.  

Then there was a glittering light above him and front it a bird slowly flew down, landing before him and morphing into the Other woman from his real existence.

He opened his mouth again to scream, and again, nothing.  

She looked him over as she stood.  So much taller than he was, and even though she was a female, even he could not deny her beauty.

“Oh Kurt…”  She spoke, reaching out and stroking long fingers through his hair, “You know it couldn’t last.”

Her touch warmed him, warmed his vocal chords, and he found himself able to speak.  “What?”

“Your happiness.”

He looked around her, at the analogous blobs of what had been the audience, steaming piles of gray now, and then back to her.  “Why not?”

“You’re not supposed to be happy.”

“Why can’t I?”

She smirked, and those crystalline eyes of her suddenly glinted, fire raging within them as they turned red.  In one sharp move her hand retreated from his hair and shot into his chest.  He gasped as he felt cold fingers wrap around his heart from the inside.

“Because that’s not your purpose.”

That was when Kurt woke up, panting and gasping for air, his hands reaching to his chest to make sure it was all intact as he lingered between his dreams and consciousness for a few moments.  When he was sure he was fine, he looked over at Beth, still asleep beside him and breathed relief that he hadn’t woken her with his stupid dream… nightmare?

His hands remained over his heart protectively as he laid himself back and caught his breath.  He had thought the intense dreams he had of Blaine were bad, but they were nothing like that.  So real and frightening.

It had to have been not only seeing his first Other, but hearing Blaine speak to the guards about Others that caused that dream.  Usually his dreams were a welcome escape into a fantasy where he didn’t have to worry about anything but enjoying himself, not a hellish horror scene.  

Whatever the case, Kurt couldn’t get himself back to sleep after that, and just let himself be used as Beth’s cuddle pillow for the duration of the night while he stared up at his ceiling wondering how a dream could make him so unsure about his ability to be happy.

 

Comic by [crazie-crissie](craziecrissie.tumblr.com)


	12. Chapter 11: Forgiveness

_**“Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.” - Ambrose Bierce** _

 

“Thanks for watching her man!  You’re a pal!” Noah said, taking his daughter by the hand and actually waving to Kurt as if he were a friend.  

“Yeah… no problem…”  Kurt muttered, then gritted his teeth and hissed out to the side and out of earshot, “Since you abandoned her all fucking day….”

Noah and Quinn hadn’t come to pick up Beth that morning, so Kurt had walked her back into town, expecting to be able to go hunting afterwards.  He was greeted though with a note stuck to the door of their apartment.

“Thanks for the day off Kurt!  We’ll use it well!” - Noah

Somewhere, something had been miscommunicated and Kurt ended up having Beth with him all day while Quinn and Noah took the day off to to god knew what together.  If Kurt hadn’t needed to check his traps after being gone those few days and hunt so he had his own private store of food, he might have not minded.  It also didn’t help that he had no idea what to do with an eight year old girl all day long.  It was one thing to watch her for the night when all that was expected was telling her stories and singing her lullabies - it was another thing entirely to try and figure out what they should do all day.

Thank goodness for Blaine.

Kurt had been in the process of trying to figure out what Beth could do for the day, since there was no school every seventh day, when Blaine had stopped by to see if Kurt was interested in finding and taming one of the wild dogs in the area.

“No.  I’m busy.” Kurt snapped impatiently.  He didn’t have time to entertain having another small creature in his home.

“I do!” Beth yelled and scooted past Kurt to grab hold of Blaine by the hand.  He went wide eyed at the little girl’s sudden grasp, then warmed and knelt before her.

“You like dogs?”

She nodded rapidly and looked back to Kurt, eyes bulging and begging, “PLEASE Mr. Hummel?  Please can I go with Mr. Anderson?”

Kurt exhaled and nodded, the stress flooding out of him as Blaine and Beth walked off together allowing Kurt to tend to his old snares and traplines for the morning before returning home to skin and prepare the animal meat.  When he heard the pair returning, he stepped outside and saw they were not alone.

“I don’t really know how I feel about having a dog nearby Blaine… it might scare off the other animals.” Kurt said, though he dropped down to squat and pet the black labrador cross he had met earlier on in the week who nudged her head into his hand, silently requesting more of the same.

“Nah… besides, she’s a total sweetheart and Beth here came up with a great name for her.”

“Pudding!”

Kurt shook his head and just held in his laugh as best as he could, though his mouth curled up into a smile as he regarded the dog before him.  “Pudding huh?”

Beth dropped to her knees and, without any concern about the dog’s reaction, wrapped her arms around Pudding to snuggle her.  “Yes, and Mr. Anderson says I can visit her whenever I want and even have one of the puppies if my mom and dad let me!”

“Puppies…?”  Kurt glanced up, expression now cold as he looked towards Blaine who deftly avoided eye contact with him.

“Oh yes!” Beth exclaimed, clearly oblivious to the sudden division between the two men.  “Mr. Anderson said she’s full of puppies and in a few weeks she’ll have them and I can come see them get bigger and then when they’re done with their mom’s milk I can have one…. if my parents say I can.”

“Well…”  Kurt looked back to Beth, letting his expression soften for her benefit,  “I hope you can have one.  They’re a big responsibility though you know.”

Again she nodded quickly, “Oh yes.  I have to feed the puppy and train the puppy to do its business outside and make sure to give it lots of pettings and brushings.”

Kurt stood up, ignoring the dog’s insistent nudges into his hands for more affection, “Yes, and your parents will probably expect you to take full responsibility of any puppy if you get one.”  He glanced back at Blaine then, “They’re not going to do the work for you if you get bored of it.”

Again, Blaine looked away, a blush creeping over his cheeks and Kurt looked back again to Beth who was already stating that she would be “the most responsible-est girl ever” if she got a puppy.

She also said she would name a puppy Cookie because those were also tasty.

Kurt had Beth read to him while he made himself new arrows that day, had her help him oil a hide he was working on tanning, and supervised her tree climbing - which she was all too good at.  They went into town for their meals, but, as always, came back with their food to eat it at the shack.  

It was during supper that Beth looked at the small pile of electronics that still sat on Kurt’s pelt bed and inquired, “When is Mr. Anderson gonna do something with those so you can show me why they’re a big deal?”

“I have to give them to him first.”

“Then you should do that.”

Kurt sighed, “I should.”

It was one thing to be around Blaine in a group or with Beth, but he knew being around him alone was going to be uncomfortable.  He was also unsure about how Blaine might react finding out that Kurt had been grabbing the phones and music players that Blaine had decided to leave behind.  Would he see it as some grand gesture?  Would he be irritated that Kurt did something he felt he wasn’t permitted to do?  Would he read too much into it?

He just wanted more music to listen to, Kurt told himself.  Unfortunately, he needed Blaine for that so Kurt was going to have to get those electronics to Blaine at some point and face whatever reaction came of it.  He just needed a bit more time to mentally prepare for those potential outcomes.  Roleplay in his mind what he could and would say depending on how Blaine reacted.  If Blaine got upset, Kurt could be snappy right back.  If he thought Kurt was bringing him gifts to make up for his earlier freak out, well than Kurt had no problem telling him where to go.  He could handle it.

So after Noah took Beth, Kurt gathered up the phones and music players and went over to Blaine’s hut - which more and more was resembling an actual cabin as Blaine improved it - and knocked on the door.

“Come in Kurt.” Blaine beckoned from inside and as Kurt stepped in, Blaine sat up.  He had been reclining on his mattress and reading a weathered copy of a book Kurt didn’t recognize offhand.  The dog, Pudding, was curled up in the bed right beside where Blaine had been laying.  She perked her head up and looked at Kurt curiously as he entered, tail wagging instantaneously.  

“How’d you…?”

“No one else visits me.  I guessed.”  Blaine said with a lopsided grin as he set the book to the side.  “What’s up?”

Kurt held out his handfuls of electronics, “Here.”

“Oh…”  Blaine held his breath for a moment and then, upon recognizing that they were actually for him to take, put out his own hands and accepted the pile.  “These… were from the trip?”  

Kurt just nodded while Blaine turned and set them down on his mattress, lining them all out one by one and then grabbing one of the solar chargers away from where it had been charging one of the old phones during the day and plugging it into one of the new ones.  “They don’t all have the same kind of adapter-plug-thing…. but maybe on another trip we could see if we could find cords that fit the other ones….”  

“Oh…. okay.”  Kurt hadn’t even thought to consider the different sized holes on the sides of them all.  Really, being the community mechanic, he should have figured that out on his own he thought to himself, but it must have just been the lack of sleep over the past couple days that made him not consider it.

“Once I see if it’ll still accept power and if it has anything of interest on it, then I’ll let you listen….”  Blaine said, suddenly quite involved in looking over each phone and player, rubbing the edges with a finger and examining the different ports on them all.  

Kurt didn’t know how to respond to this.  He had thought Blaine would have had reacted… more.  He had planned for angry or utterly giddy or extremely happy, but the simplicity of Blaine’s acceptance of Kurt’s getting him the phones didn’t seem right.  In fact, it was irritating.

“So… what?  No thank you or anything?”

Blaine’s head jerked away from the white metal rectangle he was investigating and looked at Kurt, big eyebrows squished together in a bunch on his forehead, “What?”

“I said, aren’t you going to thank me for getting those for you.” Kurt hissed between his teeth.

Blaine glanced from Kurt, to the phone in his hand and then back up.  “Thank…  you?  Kurt, did you get these for me or for you?”

“Well for you obviously!  It’s not like I have a freaking thing that charges them up!”

Blaine’s mouth opened, though nothing came out as he continued to regard Kurt with clouding eyes.  It took a huff from Kurt to re engage Blaine who held the phone back to Kurt then.  “Take it back then.”

“What?!”  Kurt put his palms out towards the offering, “No!  Why?”

“Kurt.  I don’t want a gift if you’re going to freak out like this over it… especially not after what happened….”

Kurt’s jaw clenched shut and his hands found themselves dropping to his sides in balls of fist as he looked away and towards Blaine’s fire.  All at once he felt both incredibly heavy and light in the heart, his mind racing as he tried to figure out how to respond to this.  He had screwed up.  He hadn’t planned for this and now he looked like an absolute idiot.

Again Blaine held out the phone, “Take them back Kurt.  I can’t… I don’t mind charging them up and helping you figure out how to use them… but I can’t accept them as a gift.”

He glanced at the phone in Blaine’s outstretched hand.  He couldn’t take it back.  It was useless to him without Blaine’s help - a paperweight with no paper to hold down.  A constant reminder of his failed attempt at intimacy in that town he knew he’d forever refuse to scavenge in again.  

Kurt wanted the music.  He needed it.  He needed to feel like he had done something good and he had been convinced he had, at least until this point.  He needed to make things right somehow.

“Kurt…”  Blaine took a step forward, still holding the phone and trying to get Kurt to take it back, but Kurt stepped back when Blaine stepped forward.

“No…. it’s… Just take them.”

A sigh then, and Blaine lowered his hand, “Fine.  Thank you then.”

Kurt raised his eyes then, looking at Blaine who was, once again, rubbing the back of his neck as he turned around to set the phone back on his mattress.

“You’re welcome.”

Blaine shook his head as he looked over the electronics.  “Why’d you get them Kurt?  Did you think you were doing me a favour… or….?”

“Because I wanted more music to listen to.”

“Right.  Okay then.  I get it now.”

Kurt pressed his lips together tightly and curled his toes inside his boots.  “What do you mean… you get it now.  Get what exactly?”

“This!” Blaine swept an arm over the electronics, looking back at Kurt, “It was just about you.”

“Well….”   Kurt stopped before he said something that he would regret and plucked at the edges of his coat as he thought.  How did he get into this?  Why was he even still at Blaine’s entertaining this argument for that matter?

“Don’t worry about it Kurt.  I’ll charge them up and get the music to you as soon as possible.” Blaine snapped, glancing back to the electronics as spots of colour touched his cheekbones.  

“Good.”  Kurt replied, just as hard and cold as Blaine had just been and pushed the door open.  “Thank you.”

The cold bit Kurt as soon as he stepped outside, and he pulled his arms around himself as he made the short walk back to his shabby hut.  He hadn’t propped anything up against the door when he had left earlier, so the wind was flipping it back and forth as it spun around and tossed snow up into the air from the ground.  

He really needed to fix that.

That night again he slept poorly, tossing and turning and even waking with a start several times when the wind blew so hard it made sharp whistling noises.  He was glad for morning, and the calm in the weather it seemed to bring, even though he was once again too tired and now completely irritated with Blaine’s behaviour the previous evening.

Free to do what he wanted once again, Kurt went on a hunt all morning and didn’t return until he was due to start a patrolling shift in the afternoon.  The hunt was a complete waste and Kurt had returned empty handed for the first time in months.  Still, it got him time away to clear his head and just be alone.

When he went to collect his dinner after his shift, Blaine stepped up behind him and stiffly said, “I’ve got two ready.” before leaving him there, alone again.  It wasn’t just alone this time though, it was more.  He hadn’t imposed it on himself, and because of that, Kurt ached.  He watched Blaine leave the kitchen and before he knew what he was doing, he had grabbed his food and run after the curly haired man to catch up with him down the community street as he walked back to their respective homes.

Blaine didn’t acknowledge him.

“Did you listen to what was on them?” Kurt prompted, noting that he had to quicken his own pace to keep up.

“No.  I said you’d get first listen.  There are music files on both of them though.”

Kurt kept walking, so quickly even for him, and kept stealing glances over at Blaine who was unusually focused on what was ahead of him as he walked.

“How’s Trent?”

Blaine pressed his lips together tightly and snuck a sideways glance at Kurt, brows arches just slightly before he returned his gaze forward, “Fine.”

“Blaine…”

“Why are you asking Kurt?”

Kurt stopped in his tracks, letting Blaine continue to walk for a couple moments until he seemed to realize that Kurt was no longer trying to keep up and stopped himself, looking back to the chestnut haired man.

“Why am I asking?  I’ve asked since day one Blaine!”

Blaine spread his arms out to either side as he turned to face Kurt. “But why?  How does it benefit you?”

Kurt wavered, his lips fluttering for a moment as he tried to find the right way to respond, but the sourness in his stomach that had quickly evolved blended with the heat on the back of his neck didn’t help him think.  “It… doesn’t.  I just do it.”

“So you care about him, but not me.”

Kurt’s eyes snapped up to meet Blaine’s, “What?  Blaine….”

“Nevermind.  Forget I said it.” Blaine groaned, turning himself around again to continue his walk away.

“No!”  Kurt strode after Blaine, just as intently as before.  “Stop.  You don’t get to just walk away so you can have the last word!”

“Really Kurt?  You think THAT’S why I’m walking away?” Blaine huffed, still keeping pace even though Kurt could now see the beads of sweat on the back of his neck.

“No.  I think you’re walking away because you’re a hypocrite!  You call me immature when I freak out and now, here you are, doing the same damned thing.”

Blaine stopped again, breathing in deeply though not turning or looking back at Kurt, focusing instead on the snow before him on the ground.  

Kurt took the opportunity, rounding up in front of Blaine.  “I think you think it’s easier to think that I’m completely self absorbed and that’s why I freaked out about what we did.  You think it’s my issue.”

“I never said that Kurt…” Blaine murmured weakly, though kept himself from making eye contact.

“You didn’t have to.  Look at how you’re acting!  How dare you tell me to be civil when you’re not!”

“You’re the one who had a tantrum over me saying thank you over a gift I didn’t know was a gift!”  Blaine spat, finally looking up with fire in his eyes.

“Oh please!  That was hardly a tantrum.  It was a fucking miscommunication!  Get over it!”

“Fine.  Done.  Now get out of my way.”

Kurt held his ground, “No.  Walk around me.”

Blaine rolled his eyes and stepped around Kurt who stood there for a moment before once again turning and trailing after Blaine, “Why’d you do that?”

Blaine didn’t look at Kurt.  “Because you told me to.”

“You should have argued it.”

“Honestly Kurt!”  Blaine stopped in place again and cried out to the night sky above them before looking back to him.  “What the hell do you want?  You tell me to do one thing and then expect another?  You want me to argue with you over moving?”

“No… yes….. fuck!” Kurt kicked some snow by his feet, sending a spray of white out in the air around him.  “You shouldn’t be such a pushover…..”

“I wasn’t trying to be.  I didn’t see the point in fighting over it and I wanted to get to bed.”

“Then just… go.  Fuck.”

Blaine hesitated in place for a moment, watching Kurt as Kurt watched the flakes of snow slowly fall back into place around him before he again left Kurt there.  Standing there for several minutes, Kurt just let the night blanket him in quiet, trying to figure himself out and what had come over him.

He had acted miserably just then, and for no fathomable reason he could muster.  He was absolutely immature, vile, and yes, uncivil.  Blaine had been right to call him on it.

“So you care about him, but not me.”

The words rung through Kurt’s ears even though Blaine was long gone.  Blaine thought Kurt didn’t care about him.

Did he care?

Kurt picked up his feet and walked back to his home, pointedly ignoring the cracks of light coming from Blaine’s cabin and the bark of Pudding inside it as he trudged into his hut.  

If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have helped, or put up with Blaine for that matter.  He wouldn’t have bothered talking to him.  Maybe he just didn’t care about Blaine the way Blaine expected.  Which meant that Blaine expected more.

Which meant that when Blaine said it was okay if Kurt didn’t reciprocate his feelings the other day, he was lying.  Clearly it wasn’t okay.

Collapsing into the bed without taking off his jacket, Kurt let loose a groan into the pelts of his bed.  Frustration didn’t even begin to describe how he felt, but he knew what would solve it.  After getting back up, he heated up some snow water in his pot over the fire and added some leaves from his herb collection - chamomile.  Thank goodness for those wilderness survival books he had stumbled on years ago because they had helped him identify so many plants that were edible and had other uses.  

When his tea was ready, he drank it slowly and then laid back in his bed.  He needed to sleep.  He needed a clear head that didn’t have him stumbling around Blaine like a fool so he could deal with whatever misunderstandings they were having.

The drink did help, and Kurt was out faster than he had been in days.  Dreams of hunting were followed by dreams of flying, and then…

Darkness.  All around him and nothing else.  No smells, no sounds, nothing to see or feel, and he couldn’t move again.  His legs wouldn’t do what he wanted them to do.  He was stuck in place.  Trying to call out to see if there was anyone around, he found his voice gone again, just as it had been in the dream two nights ago.  He panicked and flailed and felt the fear take him over.  He couldn’t escape, but he needed to, and no one was around.

“Oh Kurt…. just accept it.”

Her again.  She faded into view from within the darkness.  That Other woman again with her blue hair bound all around her body and leaving a trail of feathers along the path she walked to get to him.

“You can’t be free.”

He struggled in spot again, trying so hard to move.  His heart.  He couldn’t let her get his heart.  His mouth kept opening, and it felt like he was screaming, but he couldn’t hear the sound.

“Stop fighting it.”

One of her eerily long fingers reached under his chin and tipped his face up so he was looking up at her.  Again he tried to scream, but the sound wouldn’t come.

“Stop.”

He felt the cold press of her finger into the soft spot in the center of his jaw and then, just as quickly as she had tore into his chest, she stabbed upwards with her finger into his head and up into his skull.  He felt burning, and trying to yell again he couldn’t even move his mouth.  His eyes still worked, his brain too for that matter.  All he could do now was look upon her and feel his fear.

“Kurt…..”

Her voice deepened.

“Kurt!”

No.  It wasn’t her voice….

“KURT!  Wake up!”

His eyes snapped apart and his hands reached up right away to feel his chin and neck, to make sure he truly hadn’t been stabbed in the head by the finger of an Other.  He was shaking, covered in his own sweat, and his throat hurt for some inexplicable reason.

And Blaine was standing beside his bed, door open behind him with Pudding sitting in the entryway with her head cocked to one side as she looked at him.  His eyes were strained as he looked over Kurt, and Kurt could hear his breaths coming just as quickly as Kurt’s were.

“What?  Why are you here?”

“You were screaming… howling more like it….” Blaine explained, his eyebrows drawing together.

“Bad dream.” Kurt explained cooly, glancing down at his hands and flexing out his fingers.  His palms had imprints of his own fingernails from where he must have been clenching his fists in his sleep.  

“You have a lot of bad dreams….”

Kurt looked up again at Blaine, whose worry still hadn’t left his face.  “What are you talking about?  This time and one other….”

“No.  When we slept together you were fitful the whole time… and I had to hold you close to get you to settle… and I hear you screaming out regularly at night… just… never so constant as it was tonight… I thought someone was killing you and Pudding was freaking out and barking up a storm everytime you wailed.”

Kurt looked back down at his hands and fiddled with his blanket.  SomeTHING had been killing him… at least in his dreams.  

“I’m sorry Kurt….”

Kurt sighed, “It’s not your fault Blaine.  I just… I’ve never really slept well.”

“Not about that… Well I am, but it’s not what I was talking about.  I’m sorry about earlier.  I was being a jerk.”

Kurt looked back up, “So was I.”

Blaine smiled weakly, “Do you want Pudding to sleep with you?  Or maybe one of the phones to listen to?”

Kurt shook his head slowly and sighed once more.  “Thanks… for waking me.”

“Was it that bad?  Do you want to talk about it?”

Another shake of his head, “No.  It was just a dream.  Nothing to analyze but my own inability to get my head out of my ass when it comes to getting a proper nights sleep.”

Without invitation, Blaine sat on the edge of Kurt’s bed, glancing to Kurt’s hands just as Kurt was.  “I remember getting bad dreams right after The Tides… nightmares about seeing my parents and my brother get swept away in those first waves… or worse.”

“What could be worse….?”

“The first time we stumbled across a group of Others… they were piling up human corpses….  We watched them from where we were hidden in a farmer’s shed… body after body… each one more torn apart than the last….”

“Jesus… what did they do to them?”

Blaine shook his head, “I don’t know.  I don’t know.  It was like one of those awful horror movies I used to watch and laugh at with my buddies when I was younger… but real.  So real.  I still see them sometimes… and sometimes I see my family in along with them.”

Kurt shook his head, disbelief at such a scene clouding through his head, “I… miss my family.  So badly… but I’m glad I know how they went… That it wasn’t because of them.”

Blaine nodded and let the silence hang between them as they listened to each other’s breathing for the moment.  Pudding invited herself up on the bed, jumping up in one fluid movement and laying at Kurt’s feet, head tucked between her forepaws.

“Oh… no… Pudding… this isn’t your bed.”  Kurt shook his head with a smirk, “I can’t believe you let her name the dog Pudding.  It’s ridiculous.”

Blaine smiled and reached over to rub the labrador between the ears, “It made her happy and I don’t mind calling it out in the middle of the night if I need to.  Pudding here doesn’t seem to mind it either.”

Kurt couldn’t help but uncurl his toes under the warmth of the dog laying atop them.  She was definitely warm, and now that she was resting, Kurt could see the slight bulge in her stomach.  “Those puppies will be popular if what you said is true about dogs and Others.”

Blaine nodded, “I know…. and it is true.  Like I also said, if the Warbler’s weren’t nomadic, we’d have dogs of our own too.”

“Why do you all travel?  Why not settle in one place?”

Blaine shrugged, “It’s just what we’ve always done.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to have a home?”

Blaine glanced up, looking at Kurt curiously, “Everyday I hear you and watch you get up and do things in the exact same order.  Wash, exchange your bottles, eat, hunt, patrol, take your meals back here, spend your evenings making arrows or reading, try to sleep, repeat.  You don’t get to question me about breaking habits.”

Kurt’s mouth went slack and he looked away - at a total loss for words.  Blaine did have a point, but what had Kurt tense was that Blaine had admitted to being completely aware of Kurt’s idiosyncrasies.  It would have been endearing if it wasn’t so… creepy.  

Blaine exhaled, “Anyhow… it’s been suggested before that we settle down, but there’s so many different opinions in the group about where to do it or if we should do it that we’ve never ended up doing it in the end.”

Kurt looked back then, “Then why don’t you all just go your own ways?”

Blaine frowned, “Because… we’ve been together for ten years… “

“So?  You seem to be doing well enough away from them right now.”

“But…. only because I know I’m going to see them again… and I I have Trent.”

Kurt didn’t know why he said what came out of him next, but did know that he regretted it the instant it came out of his lips.

“But Trent isn’t going to be able to go back with you when you leave.”

He held his breath, watching Blaine as he clenched his eyes shut and gripped the edge of the pelts with white knuckles.  

“I know…”

Kurt’s eyebrows perked up, “You know?”

Blaine nodded, “His leg is so messed up…. and he’s already talking about Kitty in that way that you know, even if he doesn’t, that he wouldn’t be able to leave her. God I’m going to miss him.  We’ve been buddies since the beginning…”

What was that like, Kurt wondered, to have a best friend.  All his favourite stories included a best friend character.  Someone who supported the protagonist but still told them when they were being a fool.   

“I’m still in disbelief over Kitty taking a shine to him… she has always been so… antagonistic to everyone.”

Blaine chuckled and nodded once, “I still don’t know if I should tell him about that scene she made with me when you were there that one day… I think she was trying to mess with me.”

Or me, Kurt noted to himself.  “Don’t bother.  She was probably testing your friendship quality.  It’s pretty clear she likes him…”

Blaine nodded and then looked back up towards Kurt, “When I go… will you please make sure he’s okay?  Just… make sure Kitty is treating him like he deserves and that he’s happy?”

Kurt nodded absently, getting lost in pools of honey that were so deep in that moment he could drown.  He wasn’t sure what he could do if Trent was unhappy, but he knew he didn’t want Blaine to worry.

Why though?

“I’m going to give Trent the first choice of puppies…” Blaine started, looking towards Pudding then, whose tail beat against the bed in heavy thuds as she saw Blaine’s eyes on her, “... so he always has someone there for him no matter what.”

“What about Pudding?  When you go…”

Blaine glanced from the dog to Kurt, “Well… would you take care of her?”

Kurt wrinkled up his brow and looked at the dog on his feet.  He didn’t want to have to share his food, or mediocre space, with anyone else, let alone something that was going to leave hair all over him and stink up the place.

“Please?”

Kurt glanced back towards Blaine, who was so much more effective at puppy dog eyes than the damned dog was.  

“Okay…”

That made Blaine smile, and the fact that Kurt had just agreed to take on a dependant was suddenly worth it to see that smile. He shook his head and glanced back down at his hands as he let loose a chuckle.  “God...of all the things I thought I’d never do…”

“You never thought you’d have a pet?”

Kurt shook his head, “No.  Dad was allergic to dogs.  He liked them and always stopped to pet them, but his eyes would be watering for hours afterwards.  We could have never had a dog.”

“But….”  Blaine started, but stopped just as quickly.

But Burt was dead, and had been for eight years Kurt finished off for him internally.  It didn’t matter, some habits really died hard even when someone had died.

“It’s okay.”  Kurt said, looking up from his hands towards the other man, “Maybe I do need to break up the monotony a little and adjust my habits.  For example, I could add ‘feed the dog’ to my list of things I do every day in sequence.”

Blaine smiled and nodded, “She’ll be good for you… someone who’ll always be there for you…  I know you don’t always get along with other people, so maybe a dog instead?”

“Maybe…”  

“Kurt?”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you…. for the phones.”

Kurt regarded Blaine for a moment, who in turn ducked his head down a little, peering back at Kurt through a veil of too thick black lashes.  “You already said thank you….”

“But I want you to know I mean it.”

“You’re welcome….”

“I’m sorry too… for earlier tonight…”

Kurt nodded, then let one of his hands move up and settle on one of Blaine’s.  Both men jerked a little from the touch, but neither pulled away.  “So am I.  I don’t know… why I get like that… but I am sorry.”

“Forgiven..”  Blaine murmured, looking at Kurt’s hand atop his in wonder before raising his eyes to meet Kurt’s, “You’ve got to know I forgive you…”

A tightness overcame Kurt’s heart, so intense that he had to take in a deep breath to help steady himself even though he was sitting.  He should have pulled his hand back, but it seemed frozen in place and the heat from Blaine’s hand was travelling up Kurt’s arm and seemed to be making his throat tighten such that he could feel his pulse within his neck.  

“I don’t understand why…”

“I told you why….”  Blaine uttered, letting his hand roll under Kurt’s until they were connected by their palms and Blaine’s fingers wrapped around Kurt’s hand.  He was holding his hand.  Kurt’s hand… was held by Blaine’s.  

Kurt stared at the physical connection, ignoring for the moment the tingling sensation drifting through his hand and up into his arm until it reached his heart where his pulse was quickening.  He had seen people holding hands, read about it in books, heard it in the lyrics of songs… but felt it?  Not since his father had died, and this connection was so very different than his father’s grasp.  It was softer somehow, and more balanced.  His father’s hand had always been so much bigger and rougher than his, while Blaine’s hand fit with his own.  

“... because you like me….”

Blaine nodded.  He was still looking at Kurt’s hand, held gently in his own, avoiding Kurt’s eyes when Kurt looked up to Blaine’s face.  

“I don’t understand why.”  Kurt asked then.  Now he was feeling the tingling, revelling in how it seemed to warm not only his held hand, but the arm it was connected to and the heart it was reaching into.

Blaine looked up then, face flushed and eyes glossy as he looked at Kurt so intently that Kurt had to look away because it felt like Blaine was peering into his soul - if he even had a soul.  Blaine’s voice was soft when he started talking, and Kurt’s eyes fell on Blaine’s lips which kept pressing together and being licked by his tongue when he paused.

“You’re… just…. gorgeous… but I know I’ve told you that… and beyond that…. you’re different.  Not in a bad way, but you challenge me.  You make me think.  You like music… you don’t think it’s a waste of space… and your voice is just to die for!  You take care of others and even if your level of self sacrifice for others is a little bit over the top… it’s just rare to see that generosity anymore in people…. You’re intelligent.  I mean… you read and try to figure out how to do things on your own so you don’t need to rely on anyone else.  You’ve got this sense of humor that I know you don’t let out too much, but it’s dry and quirky and….”

Kurt flushed up as Blaine rambled on about all the things he thought made Kurt attractive.  Things that Kurt had always seen as boring or flawed.  He hung on every word though, eating up Blaine’s dialogue and finding himself starving for more.  His mind carried him back to dreams of being with another man, and in each picture, Blaine was now that other man - kissing him, romancing him, dancing with him…

He looked down at their interlocked hands again, and found his thumb running a path up and down the back of Blaine’s hand, timed to the beat of his heart.  Each stroke brought a shiver up his arm, but instead of it being cold and unwanted, it was actually spreading out a sensation of pleasure.

What the hell was wrong with him?

Kurt pulled his hand back, his body instantly aching and telling him to close that gap between their bodies again.  He ignored it and turned his eyes away from Blaine, “You should probably… go back to your place to sleep while there’s time before dawn.”

He didn’t see Blaine’s face as he said it, but did hear the choked sound that came before Blaine’s acceptance, “Alright.  Sleep well.”  Then the slight lift of the pelt bed around him as Blaine stood up, snapped his fingers for Pudding, and left with the dog rushing after him and leaving Kurt’s feet cool again.

It was for the best.

Still, Kurt couldn’t get his heart to settle when he laid back in his bed.  It pounded up against his ribcage and then back down into the bed, trying to escape Kurt who was clearly insane to let Blaine go so easily.  Everytime Kurt shut his eyes, trying to get back to sleep, the lids of his eyes seemed to be filled with images of Blaine so that he had to snap his eyes back up and stare at the ceiling. Where Blaine’s hand had touched his, the warmth and tingle would not fade, only increased in intensity so that he was flexing it in the hopes that would rid him of the sensation.   

His body was being a traitorous asshole.  

Eventually Kurt gave up on sleeping and started going through his morning routine.  If he couldn’t get Blaine out of his head, then he could at least preoccupy himself with something to distract himself.  That worked until it came time to wash himself and the rub of his worn cloth against his chest made him shudder and flash back to Blaine’s lips across his nipple.

Is this what his father meant, all those years ago when they had that very awkward conversation about sex?  Once he started, he wouldn’t be able to stop… Was he going through withdrawal?  Did Blaine’s sweet words tease his body like the smell of cigarettes did to those who smoked years ago?  

Whatever the cause, Kurt tossed his rag back into the pot and then took the pot off the heat before pulling his jacket on over his bare chest.  He stormed over to the nearby cabin and pushed the door open without knocking.  Blaine was up, sitting in bed with a book and Pudding at his feet.  

“Out Pudding.”  Kurt commanded, snapping his fingers towards the outside.  Surprisingly, the dog complied - hopping off the mattress and trotting outside without question.  Kurt pulled the door closed and met Blaine’s confused eyes.

“Kurt… what…?”

“Did you really mean all that?”

“What?”

“What you said earlier… about me…”

Blaine nodded.  His own eyes were dark around the edges of the skin, especially so under his eyes where they were also bagged.  He also hadn’t been able to sleep.

Kurt let the jacket slip back then, revealing his bare torso he hadn’t bothered to redress and watching as Blaine’s eyes bulged at the sight before him before averting his eyes, “What… why…. Kurt?”

Kurt didn’t bother to vocalize his reply, walking up to Blaine’s bedside while unbuttoning his jeans and pulling down the zipper as he peeled off his pants next, the boots having to be discarded along with them since his pants wouldn’t slide overtop of them.  

Blaine’s head slowly turned back, and Kurt could hear the change in his breathing as it became heavier and slower once it settled back on the sight of Kurt’s skin, staring so steadily at Kurt’s torso.

“You can tell me to stop….” Kurt murmured as he crawled into the bed, pulling up the edge of the blanket and creeping in aside Blaine.

Blaine let the book fall from his hands and then he pushed it to the side so that it fell over the edge of the mattress and onto the floor.  Kurt watched then as he pulled his own shirt off, revealing that toned chest and abdomen which Kurt took a hand to immediately.  That hair, which he, for whatever reason, was unable to grow himself, tried to curl around Kurt’s fingers as he brushed his hand down Blaine’s chest and abdomen.  He felt the hard ripple of muscle beneath it, and the hint of skin that might be smooth had it not been covered with fur.  

Blaine let Kurt touch him for a moment before ducking his own hand under the blanket and unzipping his pants, shuffling them off under the covers until they made an appearance at the end of the mattress briefly before being kicked down. Kurt let his hand slide down Blaine’s torso, under the blanket, and let his fingers graze over the erection discovered beneath them.

Blaine made a small gasp and tipped his head back, eyes now as black on the insides as they were on the skin surrounding it as he gazed at Kurt.  

“Make up for last time.” Kurt said softly, his fingers exploring the other man’s length.  He couldn’t help but blush, even though he was trying to appear confident despite his inexperience.  

He watched the bob of Blaine’s adam apple, and then the slow nod of his head.  Blaine was red in the face as well.  “Absolutely…”  His eyes caught on Blaine’s face now, Kurt found he couldn’t tear himself away from watching him - even though he had all of the man’s body offered up to him, all he could focus on was his face.

Blaine had just shaved within the past couple days, allowing Kurt to see the delicate curve of his chin and cheekbones under the stubble that insisted on protruding.  They were all full of blush.  What Kurt focused on the most though were Blaine’s lips.  He remembered how he made the correlation between the colour of Blaine’s lips and the head of his penis and couldn’t help but smile softly while Blaine was gently pushing him back on the bed.  His smile was lost though the instant Blaine’s lips connected with his neck, replaced with an open mouth made slack by the moan he couldn’t stop from escaping.

Kurt reached down to trace his fingers over the muscles in Blaine’s back then, but was quickly halted by a strong pair of hands capturing his own and holding them up and over Kurt’s head.  Unable to let his hands explore Blaine, Kurt was forced to focus on the ministrations of Blaine’s tongue and lips as they explored his neck, collarbone, and then his chest.  He didn’t think it was possible to be as flushed as he was, and as noisy for that matter.  Every touch, every press of lips resulted in a moan or whine or whimper that Kurt was sure he didn’t make himself.

He didn’t even realize his hands had been freed until they shot up at the point Blaine had made his way down to Kurt’s lower abdomen and was rolling his tongue along the length of Kurt’s cock.  Another first for him, Kurt wasn’t going to miss out and looked down at Blaine through half lidded eyes, watching the man worshipping him with his tongue and lips and looking back up at him through those damned long lashes.  Each stroke of his tongue was deliberate, slow, and terribly teasing.  Kurt put his hands on his hips, trying to hold himself back, but once again his hands were redirected - this time set right into the curls atop Blaine’s head where Kurt let the vines of hair entrap his fingers as he clutched into them.

Without anything to stop him though, Kurt couldn’t help but buck up when the sensation of Blaine’s mouth around his cock became too much for him to bear, crying out weakly while Blaine gagged around him.

Despite that though, Blaine kept up the pace he had created, taking a little bit more of Kurt with each bob of his head, and Kurt found his legs spreading out to allow Blaine the space to do his work.

Kurt could feel the tension build in the base of his stomach, and his toes were damn near digging into the balls of his feet the way they were curling up.  He knew he’d come soon.  It was just a matter of -

With a pop, Blaine came off his cock though, grinning mischievously up at Kurt who damn near hissed at him for stopping.  It was forgiven though, the instant Blaine’s finger found its way between Kurt’s cheeks and rubbed the outside of Kurt’s entrance.  A hiss was quickly changed into a moan and Kurt’s back arched with a mind all its own.

“Let me get something?” Blaine asked, as if Kurt could argue in that moment.  Kurt shuddered when he felt Blaine’s weight off the bed and the loss of contact with the other man.  His eyes searched around the room and found Blaine digging through one of his bags - a gorgeously naked sight to behold.  Whatever flaws Kurt thought Blaine had were forgotten.  All he felt then was desire and need for that body.

Blaine showed Kurt the small bottle when he walked back towards him, and though it took Kurt a moment to read it through his milky vision, he knew what it was before it was even brought back.  Remembering how it hurt the last time, his body became rigid and tense, though he forced himself to keep his legs apart.  It didn’t hurt in the end, he reminded himself, it was worth the pain.

Blaine didn’t coat himself up though with the lubricant, instead slicking up a finger which he dropped down to Kurt’s hole, rubbing the tightened muscle slowly until it relaxed enough to allow entrance to the finger which slowly slipped in to the knuckle.  Kurt held his breath initially, but let it out the instant he realized it didn’t hurt as much as before.  Blaine was going so slowly, watching Kurt’s face for a reaction before he moved that one small finger, and finally, when Kurt didn’t feel any semblance of burning, he made a nod to Blaine.

The finger slowly slid in further, and then back out, repeating that deliberate motion over and over until Kurt’s body loosened around the invader enough for pleasure to overcome any discomfort.  Without realizing it, Kurt was arcing his hips into the movement and moaning with each full swallowing of the finger.

That gave Blaine the go ahead to add a second coated finger.  Initially it caught Kurt off guard and he tensed again at the doubling of size within him, but it didn’t take very long for him to adjust that time, and he caught himself pleading for more.

A third was added, and it wasn’t enough.  Blaine was right.  If this was what things were supposed to be like, he had been much too rough that other night because Kurt felt absolutely heavenly.  With a whine, he commanded, “You… you now.”

And Blaine nodded, removing his fingers despite Kurt’s growl of disapproval so he could prepare himself with what lubricant he had.  Kurt started to roll himself over, just as he had that other night, but the hand that wasn’t coating Blaine’s cock caught Kurt by the arm.

“Please… let me look at you….”

So Kurt laid on his back, watching as Blaine carefully lined himself up and then, so carefully, pushed himself in.  He was thicker than three fingers, and definitely longer too, but instead of it hurting, Kurt moaned with each small push into him.  The stretch felt good, amazing actually, and the skin of his own cock felt too tight to contain just how aroused he was as Blaine bottomed out and held himself in place within him.

“Let me know… when I can move…”  Blaine gasped softly.

Kurt’s eyes snapped open, staring incredulously at the man above him, “Now.  Now!  Please.  Fuck.  MOVE!”

Kurt was sure he heard Blaine chuckle a little, but he was too overcome by the sensation within him.  The rub against so many nerve endings within him as Blaine pulled back and then pushed back in was intoxicating, and just when Kurt didn’t think it could get any better, Blaine’s hand tucked themselves under his hips and made him angle in such a way that his most sensitive of spots was being stimulated.

He knew he swore.  He knew he yelled.  He definitely knew he didn’t care though.  Everything felt so perfect that he could die happily in that moment.  When he orgasmed, he was sure it came too soon and Blaine would figure out exactly how inexperienced he was, but he didn’t care.  He just didn’t care and it was wonderful.  

A gasp came above him and Blaine stilled inside him.  Kurt felt the warmth inside and then Blaine’s body cover him, shudders passing through them both in silence.

When Blaine did pull out, he did so very slowly, kissing Kurt’s collarbone again as what had to be a way of distracting Kurt from the sudden emptiness and burn of the air as it replaced the space Blaine had made inside him.  

Thankfully, it worked to an extent, helped along by the fact that Kurt was somewhere between consciousness and sleep.  He didn’t noticed this time when Blaine stepped away, and was only somewhat aware when he felt something wiping off his chest, stomach, and rear.  He did hear Blaine open the door and call for that damned dog, and he did smell the dog when it entered and sniffed his face, making Kurt turn his head away.

The blanket was pulled up over him, and for awhile, Kurt let himself lay in peace, ignoring the fact he had found himself pressed not only against a hairy man, but also had a hairy dog on his other side for some reason.  Then, as the light stabbed into the corners of his eyes from the cracks in the planks of the walls, he forced himself to sit up.

Beside him, Blaine had drifted off to sleep, his arms wrapped around Kurt’s waist and a happy smile on his lips.  Kurt couldn’t help but smile in return, though Blaine couldn’t see it.  This was as close as he’d come to those dreams that haunted him, that teased him with bliss and scenes from a life he’d never have.  Maybe he would never be able to have such a life, but at least he could get some brief joy out of this situation.

For now though, he needed to go out and hunt.

 


	13. The Library

_**“The ability to breathe the air and drink the water will be what the wars will be about from here on in. And it's coming with alarming rapidity.” - William Shatner** _

Days passed, then weeks, and a new routine was formed overtop of the old one.  Wake, wash, hunt, patrol, read, make arrows, visit Blaine and send away Pudding, have sex with Blaine, return to his own bed, start again.  Certainly not everyday, but enough for Kurt to feel that he was making up for lost time as well as getting as much in as he could before spring when Blaine would go.  

Each and every time in Blaine’s bed was so different, even if they were doing something they had already done before.  Sometimes a simple touch was enough to bring Kurt to climax while other times he felt greedy, wanting more, needing more, to come undone - begging and pleading until everything hit him all at once.

Blaine, at first, had asked Kurt to stay with him afterwards - to cuddle and share his bed.  After the first few times though, he stopped asking.  Kurt always got himself dressed again and left for his own bed, for the freedom and space he was used to.  He didn’t want to become accustomed to sharing a bed with someone.  Getting used to having another body beside him was not something he knew he would be able to handle, especially if it was another habit he’d have to break come spring.

The sex helped Kurt in ways couldn’t have anticipated.  He slept better, felt better, even moved better somehow.  The tension that had been a part of his body for so long dissipated, making Kurt realize that for a long time, he had been living with aches and pains he had just accepted as part of who he was.  Now with them gone, he was able to be a better version of himself.  He picked up on new tracks and brought in more kills than ever before.  He was able to tolerate the little nuances of people that would irritate him into leaving for the comfort of his home otherwise.  He was even able to stomach all the crab apple desserts the chefs kept hoisting upon him.

He never talked about it and Blaine never pressed the issue.  It was an unspoken acceptance that whatever they had was a ticking time bomb, waiting for the spring to detonate - but not with an explosion, something still and silent instead.  When Blaine held a hand out for Kurt to take once in town, Kurt ignored it.  He pretended not to hear Blaine’s insistent compliments when they passed one another in town either, and just like staying to cuddle afterwards, Blaine stopped providing the compliments and his hand - at least when they were outside of the safety of his cabin.  Blaine had to know that asking Kurt for more was pointless.  

“Well aren’t you just a ray of obnoxious sunshine.” Kitty said, looking Kurt up and down when he came into the clinic one morning.

Kurt glanced down over himself.  He hadn’t been smiling when he entered, nor had he said anything yet, so how Kitty presumed he was all that pleasant was a mystery.  “I brought Mike some stuff he asked me to keep an eye out for…”

Kurt handed over a bag, which Kitty peeked into and then smirked.  “Actually, I asked for it, and Mike must have passed along the message.”  She pulled a plant out, purple flower with a long green stem and longer root included. Kurt had found it on his hunt that morning which matched the description Mike had given him. Finding plants in the middle of winter was rare, but this particular plant and several along with it had been sheltered by a circling of trees.  “Milk thistle.  Helps with heartburn… and a lot of liver problems.”

“Never figured you for a botanist.” Kurt grunted, one eyebrow arched as he tried to hide any indication that he was impressed.

She tucked the plant back into the bag, along with the others Kurt had found growing with it.  “I was a worker before this you know.  I made it my job to know what the hell I was harvesting, even if everyone else was just happy to cut it and throw it into piles.  Now that I’m in this position, maybe what I learned about plants can actually help people.  We can’t rely on finding old prescriptions forever after all.”

“How do you prepare them?”

Kitty looked back to Kurt, eyes twinkling just slightly as she caught his gaze, “Pulp it down and, depending on what you want to use it for, either as simple as making it into a tea or as difficult as having it react with other things.  Each part has a different use… why do you care anyhow?”

Kurt shrugged, “Just… always on the lookout for more useful information.”

“Yeah, but you don’t talk to others unless you have to.”

“Just let me know if there’s any other plants you want me to watch out for.  Good bye Kitty.” Kurt said then, turning in place.  It was true he was being too friendly and he didn’t want people to get used to it - especially not her.  

It wasn’t the first unusual interaction he had that day.

“Kurt, can I talk to you?”

David Karofsky had come up alongside him, right in the middle of town where Kurt couldn’t very well tell him where to go without making a scene.  “What is it David?”

“Well, the Christmas party is coming up and I’d like to ask you to join me.”

Kurt rolled his eyes for all to see and immediately shook his head, “First of all, Christmas was probably two weeks ago by my estimates, secondly, I don’t know why you bother asking me.”

“I told you I would… and when it might have actually been doesn’t matter.  It’s a chance for people to get together and celebrate.”

Kurt made a tutting sound in his mouth, “Celebrate what exactly David?  That we’re still alive?”

“Yes!” The bigger man spluttered, “Absolutely!  Why not?”

“Not interested.”

That elicited a groaning growl from Karofsky who threw his hands up in the air and then back over his hair, “Kurt, you’re impossible!  Why don’t you just give it… give ME a shot?”

“I’m not so easily won over for starters David.  Just having a dick and wanting me doesn’t guarantee you’ll get me.”

Of course, Kurt thought to himself, that wasn’t true of everyone these days.  His mind drifted to the thought of Blaine between his thighs the night before and a sly smile graced his features.

“Fuck.  Only you would be concerned with romantic pretenses in this day and age.  Fine.  I’ll ask again for the Valentine’s day gathering you know.” David grunted as he left.

Which would also be scheduled probably be two weeks too late.  

“Kurt!”  Rachel called after him not even five minutes after that exchange, and once again he had to stop in place and entertain someone who exhausted him.

“Yes?”

“I know you’re quite busy with… well… whatever it is you do.”  She started in on him, rounding before him so she was face to chest with him.  Rachel was ridiculously short. “But I was hoping to get you to help out with the class.”

“With what exactly?  I’ve already come in several times in the past couple months to do survivalism lessons.  Unless you expect me to teach them the virtues of not eating the yellow snow you might want to hold back on overusing me as a guest speaker.”

She shook her head, “No, no… it’s just that I’d like to get them reading more and I thought that since you’ve contributed most of the books in that book dump we call a library that maybe you could sort and catalog them so it was like a real library.”

Kurt’s eyebrows rose nearly right off his head, “Are you kidding me?  You know how much work that is?”

“Oh pish-posh.  Just dewey decimal them and you’ll be fine.”

“I don’t think you recognize just how much time that would take….”

“Well find some helpers!  This would be a great opportunity for you to network.”

She wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

He let loose a sigh and shook his head, “Fine, fine… just… give me some time…”

A sharp clap struck his ears as her hands collided together, accompanied by a victorious yelp that only Rachel seemed capable of.  How her students tolerated her was beyond Kurt’s capacity for understanding.  “Excellent!”

Which is what led Kurt back to the clinic,

“How mobile is Trent?” Kurt asked Mike, forgoing a greeting.

“Uh… what?  Why?” Mike seemed taken aback by the question and glanced to Trent’s room and then back to Kurt.

“I need someone to help with organizing the library and since he has limited mobility and probably wouldn’t be able to do most jobs around here even when he is healed up.. I thought….”

“That’s brilliant Kurt.”

“Plus he and Blaine were fancy pants rich kids back before the Tides… I have a feeling he could probably recite the dewey decimal system categories off by heart if I asked him.”

Mike chuckled, then just looked over Kurt’s face thoughtfully.

“Do I have something on my face?”

“No… you just look different.  Better I’d say.”

“Didn’t even know I was sick Mike.” Kurt huffed, arms immediately crossing over his chest defensively.

“Not in a way I could handle anyhow.  And to answer your question… we were going to move Trent out and into an apartment of his own soon anyhow, so, with help, he’d be able to do what you’re suggesting.  He’d probably just need help with carrying the books.”

Kurt nodded to Mike.  It went without saying who was the best choice for helping Trent would be.  He proposed the idea to Blaine that evening while he was pulling his pants back up and tightening his belt.

“It would probably make you both feel more useful and included around town….”

Blaine was watching Kurt from where he was still laying in bed, eyes still glossy and his curls tight with the sweat coating it.  As had become usual, he was quiet after sex, which would have been fine on it’s own, but the way he watched Kurt as he got dressed and left always had Kurt feeling uncomfortable afterwards - though clearly not uncomfortable enough to stop him from coming back.

This time though, Kurt was trying to get a response out of Blaine, so keeping quiet wasn’t an option.  Once he had his shirt pulled over himself, he turned and looked at Blaine curiously.  “Bad idea?  Did I miss something?  Does Trent have a paper allergy?”

That got a small smile out of Blaine, at least one that cracked up the corner of his mouth.  “No…  the opposite actually.  I’ve had to do book runs for Trent daily the way he’s whipping through books from there.  I’m just glad he’s off his poetry kick.  The amount of sappy love sonnets I had to listen into when Kitty was in the room was sickening.”

Kurt chuckled and shook his head, trying to picture it.  Admittedly, his perspective on it was skewed by the fact that Kitty had only ever been caustic to him and he couldn’t imagine her buying into something so sickly sweet.

“It is a good idea Kurt… Maybe once… once spring comes, Trent could function as a librarian here anyhow…”

“Have you talked to him at all about staying?”

Blaine sighed and shook his head, looking away from Kurt and towards his fire.  The sadness in his eyes drew Kurt back to the bed where he sat on the edge and set a hand on Blaine’s.  “Hey… he’ll be fine here.  I’ll look out for him when you’re gone.”

Kurt watched the adam’s apple bob in Blaine’s mouth and the forced blink of his eyes.  “RIght.  Thanks.”

“You could always come visit him you know… it’s not like it’s good bye forever.”

Blaine shook his head quickly then, “No… no… us coming up this far North was a fluke as it was.  We were following a path that we thought went further south and it actually turned us the other way… “

“That doesn’t mean….”

Kurt just stopped talking.  Blaine was unresponsive and not even looking at Kurt.  He just needs time, Kurt told himself, time to come to terms with the idea.  Trent and Blaine were like best friends after all.  It would be hard to give up that brotherly bond - at least that’s how Kurt imagined the pair, it’s not like he knew from any experience.

“I’ll call in Pudding for you.” Kurt said quietly as he got up and left the small home.  The cold air always felt good on his skin after a heated romp.

Pudding was getting weighty fast.  Her belly sagged and Kurt had quietly acknowledged that if he was going to continue his evening meetings with Blaine, he would have to take Pudding to his cabin or get used to having a voyeur dog around.  All of her unborn puppies had already been claimed by community members, eager to get their hands on a dog now that they knew the value of having a pet against the threat of Others.  Even Quinn and Noah had agreed to let Beth have one without much of a fight.  

Some were trying to tame wild dogs on their own as well, though none seemed to be able to do it as easily as Blaine had and he had been spending an increasing amount of time helping to tame those wild dogs to the point that he was purposely breeding a set so there were more puppies to go around.  Puppies were easier to train than dogs after all.

Despite that though, Kurt was still tentative about taking a dog of his own.  Pudding was an absolute sweetheart.  She has barely been with Blaine for a few weeks and was already obedient and compliant like no dog Kurt had ever known existed.  But she shed, and took up more space than Kurt had to give.  It was silly, Kurt knew, to worry about shedding when most of his outerwear and his whole bed and blanketing system was made from pelts and hides, but it irked him nonetheless.

Trent was elated to be asked to organize the library.  Apparently his months as a bed bound invalid had made him more than anxious for something to do to prove himself and Kurt had to forcibly extract himself from the hug he ended up receiving abruptly from a man who still barely walk, let alone lunge as he had at Kurt in order to give him said hug.  

He wasn’t surprised to find Trent and Blaine already in the library later that day, making various stacks and talking about how to make shelving.

“Let me know if you guys need anything.” Kurt offered, and while it was meant to be just a polite offering with no actual concern over doing anything, Kurt found himself with a list of things to look out for on future scavengings as well as a plea to collect and chop wood to build the shelves.

“How many kids are there in the school anyhow?”  Blaine asked that night as he sat by Kurt, dutifully helping to make arrows as Kurt had taught him the skill a couple weeks earlier.  He still had issues keeping the sinew taunt though and kept fumbling when he tied the arrowhead on.

“MMm…. about forty I think…”

“That’s a pretty big chunk of kids.. mind you if they’re five to eighteen then -”

“No.  Three to fourteen.”

Blaine dropped another arrowhead on his lap, cursed under his breath and then looked back to Kurt, “Fourteen?  Why fourteen?”

“It’s not like we have a competitive post secondary situation Blaine.  At best, the school is a place for the kids to be babysat while their parents work and they learn the fundamentals of what they need to know.”

Blaine made a small huff, which Kurt knew by this point meant Blaine was disagreeing with the statement but not willing to argue it.  “What qualifies as fundamental?”

“Well… basic math skills, reading, Rachel insists on music, Finn does a lot of sports with them and bores them with old sports statistics…”

“I used to be a big Buckeyes fan…” Blaine murmured, twisting a piece of sinew over his thumb and staring it down with determined focus.

“Mmm… my dad was too…”  Kurt mused, pausing his own movement for a moment as a scene of his dad yelling at some sport with a ball on their television.  He caught himself though and began wrapping the arrow shaft again, “Anyhow… they also have “experts” come in and talk to them.  How to harvest, how to spin cloth, how to cook different things….”

“Sounds not like school at all.”  Blaine grumbled, holding his tongue between his teeth as he tried to get an arrowhead to stay in place.

“And what would you have them learn Blaine?  Calculus and Latin?  What use would that be?”

“About as much use as it was before the Tides.  That’s not the point.  Ha!”  He had gotten the arrowhead in place and successfully tied it down.

Kurt chuckled and took Blaine’s pile of materials and swapped it with his own, “Here.  Binding them is easier.”

“Thanks….” Blaine murmured, half-insulted, half-grateful.  “Anyhow… I don’t know… I just wish I had gotten the chance for high school.”

“I’m kind of glad I didn’t… it was bad enough in middle school when my voice really didn’t change and I didn’t start growing one of those terrible wispy mustaches that seem to be a sign of puberty among boys.  The teasing was relentless.”

“Oh Kurt….” Blaine looked up.

Kurt shook his head, “It’s over.  Doesn’t matter.  It’s not like high school would have been useful for what I’m doing now.”

“What would you have done… if the Tides hadn’t happened?”

It was the first time Kurt had been asked that.  He had heard people ask it of one another all the time, especially in casual conversation, but never had the question been addressed to him.

“I really don’t know… I’m not… I’m not who I was back then… I don’t think I’d recognize myself from back then.”

“But you must have the memories right?”

Kurt knew.  It didn’t matter that he’d never been asked before this moment - he knew what he had wanted.  Saying it aloud though… he wasn’t going to do it.

“I have memories sure… just… I guess I wasn’t thinking about it then.”

“Mmm… I had it all planned out.”  Blaine said, looking up at the ceiling dreamily, “Graduate, top of my class with various distinctions and honors… apply to all sorts of prestigious schools my parents would approve of… and then go into the arts to spite them!”

Kurt laughed at that openly, shaking his head, “Blaine… that’s terrible!  Why would you go into something just to spite them?”

Blaine took in a deep breath and then exhaled it slowly, looking back down to his arrow, “Not just to spite them.  I loved dancing and singing since I was little… but when my brother went to L.A. to pursue acting, I was warned not to follow the same foolhardy path he had by my parents… especially since I was gay.  I needed to be respectable and not a cliche according to my dad.”

The grin on Kurt’s face quickly fell.  He had forgotten how bad things were for gay kids before The Tides, especially when it came to parents.  It was doubly hard to accept since his own dad had supported him to the end. “Blaine….”

Blaine just kept talking though.  “... I had just gotten out of the hospital you know?  Right before the Tides.  My parents picked me up from the hospital and dropped me off at Dalton… the prep school I was going to attend.  I had been beaten at my old school for going to a dance with another guy… My dad’s attitude was like… well, you’re gay, you’d better get used to life sucking.  Just the way the world is.”

Kurt worried his lower lip between his teeth as he watched Blaine speak, so absorbed in the memory he was relating.  How was he supposed to react to it though?  How could he react to it?

“... and I remember, a few years ago, thinking back to how my dad said that and thinking about how no one really cares about that anymore because they’re too busy surviving and even if you are gay - well, hey… at least you’re not one of them.  For a moment I actually wished my dad was there so I could tell him that life doesn’t have to suck like he said… then I remember that he died because of The Others… and… well hell… there’s no winning is there?”

Kurt had thought that was the end of Blaine’s story, setting down the arrow he had in his hands and crawling aside Blaine when the curly haired map nipped his lower lip, shook his head and looked back up, “Fuck.  I miss him still even… ten years and I miss him even though I distinctly remember feeling like I hated him.”

There wasn’t anything Kurt knew to say, knew to do.  No one ever told him how to handle someone else being upset like this.  It wasn’t in any of his books.  So he opted to place a hand gently on Blaine’s shoulder to let him know he was there.  It was the least he could do when Blaine was opening up to him like he was.

Blaine’s held dropped back down, the curls brushing over the back of Kurt’s hand, and then Blaine’s head followed, resting on Kurt’s hand.  Emitting a weary sigh, Blaine murmured, “Sorry.  I wrecked the arrow making mood.”

Kurt smiled and let out a small chuckle as he rubbed over Blaine’s shoulder, “That’s okay… I’ve been told I can have mood swings too.”

“You?!” Blaine mock-gasped as he withdrew his head and made a faux face of shock at Kurt.  “No!”

He got a playful smack on the shoulder in response.  “Make arrows Anderson.”

“Yes sir.”  

Blaine had somehow weaseled into Kurt’s evening routine weeks ago and Kurt had just accepted it.  It made the transition to the bed easier anyhow.  Arrow making went faster even with Blaine’s deplorable skill at it, and Kurt had begun to teach him how to use a bow as well - which was also a lesson in patience for Kurt as Blaine didn’t seem to be able to hold the bow straight for more than a second.  They always listened to music during their evenings together, commenting on the lyrics or comparing one artist to another.  

“I have an idea…”  Blaine prompted one evening, holding out a particularly worn out looking phone for Kurt to see.

“I thought that one didn’t have any music on it…”

“It doesn’t.  It does have a record function though and lots of room….”

“Blaine… if you are suggesting that we make a sex tape in this dystopia… -”

Blaine held his hands up with the palms out right away, “No! Not that!  Just listen….”

Kurt retracted the brows he had raised in automatic defense down and looked at Blaine, waiting for the point to be made.

“I want to record you singing.”

“You’re kidding right?”

Blaine fervently shook his head, “No… that time you were singing to Beth…. it was so amazing…. I just….”  He looked at the phone in his hand, “I just want to be able to hear you sing… even when I’m gone.”

Kurt rolled his eyes.  He wasn’t that good, especially after years of not practicing.  

“Please Kurt?”

“I’ll think about it….”

Blaine’s grin that followed was so huge that Kurt had to look away lest he agree right there and then and give up all semblance of power he had in making that decision, even though that face had essentially made the choice for him.  Terrible voice or not, he couldn’t say no to such a sweet request as that, especially when it was Blaine asking.

“Can you trim me up?”

Despite having a go-to in town for hair and esthetic needs, Wade-Unique Adams, Blaine still insisted on having Kurt take care of his beard and hair.  

“I still think you should learn to shave yourself….” Kurt said with a shake of his head as he went to grab his scissors and a razor out of one of his bins.  “... at least before you go.”

“I like being pampered.  It’s my privileged upbringing you know.”  Blaine said, tilting his head back to rest against Kurt’s bed.  

“Mmmhmmm…”  Kurt set a pot of water on the fire with a rag in it and then crept to Blaine, eyeing over that persistent stubble that would turn into a thick hairy forest if he let it grow out any more.  “You know, even when I wasn’t able to grow anything on my face, my dad still taught me how to shave.”

“I’m sure my dad might have, but I was left with my nanny most of the time and aside from a particularly nasty looking mole, she didn’t have any facial hair to demonstrate to me how it was done.”

Kurt reached back and grabbed the rag from the quickly heated pot, wrenching the extra water from it and then laying it over the bottom half of Blaine’s face to soften his skin before the shave.  “I should have figured you would have had a nanny to wipe up after you.”

Blaine made a response, though it was muffled through the rag.  Giving him a pat on the shoulder, Kurt chuckled, “Give it a second.”

He enjoyed these simple moments.  No one else around, no urgency for sex, or focus because they were in the act, but just laid back moments when they were just around one another and Kurt felt like he could let down his walls just a bit.  

He gave Blaine a thorough shave, leaving no nicks and leaving him so smooth that Kurt couldn’t help but draw his fingers down the freshly cleaned face.  “Perfect.”

Blaine grinned back, “You are.”

Kurt discarded the compliment with a roll of his eyes and nudged Blaine’s side, “Come on, let me tidy up that mop on your head.”

“I think you secretly like my curls.”  Blaine said as he repositioned himself with his back to Kurt.  “Your fingers are always in them…”

“They help keep me grounded.”

Kurt unfurled each curl and cut it down to a tidier length, tossing the remains into the fire where they curled up tightly and made a small stink before joining the ashes at the bottom of Kurt’s fire pit.

“When Trent and I were exploring Dalton, we found the library and Trent nearly peed himself when he saw just how big the 900’s were…”

“900’s?”

“History stuff… Trent loves a good book on war.  Anyhow… the library in town had a sorry lack of history books.  I think it’s important that we try to get some of those books on our next trip out.”

Kurt ran his fingers through Blaine’s hair, searching for hidden curls that weren’t as noticeable.  “People here don’t like to be reminded of how far humanity has come… and how far it’s gone back.”

“Still.  It’s our history.  Humanity’s history.  It shouldn’t be lost to them.”

“It’s a shame politicians have gone extinct because with words like that, you’d be a shoo-in for whatever office you’d run for.”

Blaine chuckled.  “I mean it though.  There’s a lot people can learn… or even aspire to in history.  If kids like Beth don’t know what we’ve lost, how can they know what they have to gain?”

“You turning renegade on me Anderson?”

“No… just… I don’t know.  I think they should appreciate the miracle of their existence since we seemed to be almost pretty wiped out after The Tides.”

Kurt sighed, leaning back on his knees.  “You’re all done.”

Blaine reached up and fingered through his hair, “You cut it shorter this time… it feels so light.”

“Turn around… let me see you from the front.”

  
**Checking out the Shave courtesy of Crazie-Crissie**

Blaine obeyed and Kurt took in a breath.  It was such a simple thing - a shave and a haircut, but it did so much to take the age and hardships off of him.  

“You look decent.  Less homeless.”

Blaine grinned and checked out what reflection of himself that he could see in the pot.  “Oh yah.  I haven’t had my hair this short in years.  I look like a kid again.”

“You always have a childlike quality to you.”  Kurt noted as he put away his tools, “You just look like a less homeless child now.”

“Mmm… it’s a shame there’s that meeting tonight because my weiner area could use a trim around too.”  Blaine said with a wink.

“Weiner?  Really?  That is the least sexy term you could use for it.”  Kurt said coolly as he looked back to Blaine.

“Manrod?”

Kurt arched an eyebrow.

“Dangly wangly?”

The other eyebrow went up.

“Gentleman sausage?”

He pursed his lips together tightly.

“Beef bayonet?”

Kurt couldn’t hold it in any longer and burst into a fit of giggles, holding his stomach tightly as he tried not to laugh out his spleen which seemed to please Blaine to no end as the smile he bore stretched over his face in complete satisfaction.

When Kurt was finally able to catch his breath and wipe away his laughing tears, he stood up and led the way out and to the monthly meeting being held on the main street instead of the hill outside of town where it usually was held in more temperate months. When they got there, a line-up for what smelled like chili was already well formed and the pair added themselves to it.

“Thank you for coming everyone!” Rachel announced as soon as they had gotten their meal and leaned back against one of the buildings.  The loud brunette had centered herself on the street so everyone could see her.  “We’ll make it quick so we’re not out in the elements for too long!”

The usual reports were given - Mercedes for the workers, Carole for the clinic, Santana reported for the guards, and Finn even gave a report on what the ‘theme of the month’ was going to be in the school.  Rachel then spoke again.

“Renovation of the library is nearly complete thanks to Kurt, Blaine, and Trent!”

A smattering of applause, mostly polite, though broken up by the exuberant clapping of the children in the mix who had clearly been coerced by their teacher into thinking the library was a big deal.  Blaine nodded with a smile to those who looked towards him, while Kurt just ignored it.  Trent had made it out for this meeting too, sitting on a bench with Kitty at his side not far from where Kurt stood.  He also smiled, though looked a little taken aback by the announcement and sudden attention placed on him.

“Trent not a crowd person?” Kurt whispered over.

Blaine shook his head, “Nope.”  He was also looking over towards Trent, noting his obvious discomfort as the bigger man shrunk against Kitty.

“Library is a good place for him then.”

Blaine smiled softly and nodded in reply

“Finally, the Christmas gathering is in a couple days!  Anyone who’d like to come help decorate would be more than appreciated!”

Blaine looked towards Kurt and Kurt immediately shook his head.  He would not be volunteering to make the old hall look tacky with the few decorations people had kept for a party he wasn’t going to be a part of.

“Why not?”

“Not my thing.”

“Trent and Kitty are going and he can’t even dance.”

“I’m patrolling anyhow.”

“Oh.”

As people left, Kurt looked again to Blaine, “You know, my not going, doesn’t mean you don’t have to abstain from it.  It’s not like we’re a thing or anything.”

Blaine didn’t respond to the statement, just took in a breath and then turned towards where Kitty was helping Trent up, “I’ll see you later.”

“Alright.”

Kurt had patrol that night so he didn’t see Blaine until he came into the library the next day to help make some more shelves.  Blaine seemed to understand construction better than Kurt did, despite insisting that he had no training, and Kurt was good at collecting lumber and cutting it to size.  Together they built shelves against the walls and placed the books where Trent wanted them.

While he was there, Rachel came in, children in tow - all as loud as they could possibly be until Rachel hushed them.

“We just came to check up on the library!  Would you be willing to read the kids a story perhaps?”

Finn was nowhere in sight, which meant that he was probably sick or busy with something and Rachel was looking for other adults to help support her child minding.  Poor Trent, once again taken aback by the crowd of small humans now filling up the small space, was her victim.

“I’ll do it.” Blaine offered after sizing up his friend’s reaction.  He quickly choose a story and sat himself down on one of the benches they had also build for the library, the children sitting themselves on any available floor space they could find.  While Kurt continued to stack the shelves with books, he listened in as Blaine enchanted the children with a tale of a writer who wanted to write books, but instead wrote obituaries because he needed the money.  Blaine used different voices for the different characters, and had the children all giggling - even the older ones who were always so set on trying to be too cool to find things funny the same way the younger children did.  By the time he finished, Kurt had gotten all the books loaded onto the shelves while Trent was busy labelling the sides of more of them and creating index cards for them all.

A hand rose, then several more, and Blaine found himself answering questions.  Most were content based - what was an obituary?, how did money work?, why would someone have to pay for food?  Then, precocious Beth spoke up.

“Why can’t people do what they want to do?”

“Well… he did end up writing books Beth, he just had to work for it.” Blaine offered, getting a shake of her head as part of the response.

“No.  I mean, why can’t people here write if they want to?  Missus Berry says it’s because of supply and demand but what if I don’t want to be a worker?”

Rachel chimed in then, “Beth dear, you don’t have to be a worker.  You could be a guard… or a hunter like your mom…”

“But I don’t want to be those things either!”  Beth stood up then and Kurt watched the scene from between the tops of a layer of books and the bottom of a shelf he was standing behind. “Mel, George, and Tatum all want to do what Missus Adams does and cut hair and do nails n’ stuff… but everyone says that there’s not enough demand for there to be that many people who do that, so the first person who wants to apprentice with her will get to do it and that means Mel ‘cause she’s the oldest… but what if George or Tatum are better at it… or love it more?  It’s not fair…”

“Beth.” Rachel’s tone became stiff - her warning voice.  

Blaine made a small shhing sound and glanced towards Beth, “Want to hear another story about that?”

Beth narrowed her eyes at Blaine as she regarded the question, a spitting image of her mother in that instant.  She nodded and sat herself back on the ground, waiting patiently for Blaine to begin.

“Well… there once was a boy who dreamed of singing.  It was all he wanted to do, and he knew that if he didn’t get to sing when he grew up, it would be like he wasn’t able to breath….”

How did Blaine know that? Kurt thought to himself, his own eyes narrowing as he listened into what was such a clear description of how he felt before The Tides.

“... but the Tides came, and in order to breath at all, the boy had to run.  Run away from The Others in the hopes he’d be able to save his voice to share it with the world when things returned to the way they should be…. but they didn’t change back.  Life had changed around him and the stages and radios that he yearned for were no more.”

“Doesn’t mean he shouldn’t still’ve sung…” Beth grumbled in a not so quiet whisper which earned her another warning from Rachel.

“The boy was shocked to find that even though there was no more place for singers in the new world, that he was still alive and breathing.. and he figured out that life was more than just what you did to earn money… like it was in the past…. or to help out… like it is now… it was about the people you knew, what you did to keep yourself happy… happiness doesn’t always mean having the job you want.  It can be found in keeping the people you care for fed and watered and safe.  It can be found in a sunrise… or in a book even… When the boy was growing up, he heard people say things like ‘Do what you love, the money will follow’ and had thought that saying was about the job he had… but when he got older, he realized that saying was wrong.  It was more important to live in the moment.  Waiting for a future that might never come stops you from enjoying and experiencing the present.  If you need to work the fields in order for everyone to have the food they need, then be happy about it because it means you’re feeding your family and friends so that they’ll be with you and you can do things with them after work that you do enjoy.”

The room was quiet. The older children nodding to themselves as if they understood while the younger ones fidgeted in place and looked confused.  Beth was one of the nodders though, and miraculously had nothing more to add to the topic.   

“How’d you know…?” Kurt asked later, after they had left the library and after they had exhausted themselves with sex.  

“Wha?”  Blaine asked back, his chest rising high as he was still working on catching his breath.

“That story you told… I never told you I wanted to sing… how did you know that about me?”

Blaine’s brow furrowed, then flattened, “You thought I was telling a story about you?”

Kurt nodded.

“That was about me Kurt…..”

“Oh….”

Blaine leaned onto his side then, propping himself on an elbow as he looked over Kurt with renewed vigor.  “You wanted to sing?”

Kurt shrugged up his shoulders noncommittally and looked away as he turned himself over and sat up, beginning the process of redressing himself.  “I guess.  I was a kid though.  What did I know?”

“You would have been amazing… on the radio with hits galore.  I probably would have been one of those insane fans waiting in line for hours just to catch a glimpse of you….”

Kurt snicked and shook his head, standing up to pull his pants up.  “Doubtful.”

“You’re too hard on yourself you know.”

“Well at least you’ve heard me sing… I’ve never heard you sing and you’re the one so open about what your dreams were.”

Kurt turned just in time to see Blaine frown down at the mattress before looking back up to Kurt, “I’m afraid if I sing again I’ll never want to stop.  It’s easy enough to tell a bunch of kids what they need to do in order to keep on going, but actually shutting down a dream like that was harder than I make it out to be.”

Kurt kept his eyes on Blaine, curious, as he grabbed his sweater off the floor.  “Is that why you treasure your little electronic music boxes so much?”

Blaine nodded stiffly.  “Speaking of which, do you want one tonight?”

It was a rhetorical question.  Even if Blaine hadn’t asked, Kurt would have grabbed one from the charged pile.  Blaine was clearly trying to redirect the conversation.

“Yeah.  I’ll grab one on my way out.”

“Call Pudding in for me?”

“Of course.”

Kurt did grab a phone off the top of the pile and wrapped his arms tightly around his waist as he stepped out, boots crunching down into the snow fresh from a fall earlier in the day.  He cursed himself for leaving his coat back at his own home because even the seconds long walk was going to make any exposed skin of his raw with how dry and cold it was outside.  Thankfully Pudding returned quickly, her belly sagging heavily beneath her, full of pups.  It wouldn’t be long until the litter was born and labrador crosses would be all over town.

He was still getting used to the idea of having a dog once Blaine was gone.  He always figured he was more of a cat person.

Of course, once Blaine was gone he could always make his old place into an extra large dog house since he was still planning to take over Blaine’s much better constructed shack.  Maybe even add a little more onto the front to give it a homier feel.  

For some reason though, no matter how he wrapped his head around it, it still didn’t seem to give him a sense of what home should be, and after over eight years in this place it bothered Kurt that he didn’t know what home was.

  
  



	14. Chapter 13: Gardening

_**“Kissing is like drinking salted water, you drink and your thirst increases.” - Chinese Proverb** _

 

“Tighter…. Blaine!  Tighter!”

The crack of the string sounded, and Blaine’s hand fell to his side with an exasperated sigh.  “How do you… it doesn’t look that hard when I’m watching…”

Kurt gave his head a shake and pushed himself off of the tree he had been leaning back on as he directed Blaine’s bow training.  To say that Blaine was having problems with the skill would have been an understatement.

“Those biceps of yours are deceiving.  Here I thought you’d have no problem pulling back on that string….”  Kurt hummed, taking Blaine’s fallen hand in his own and lifting it back up to the string where he needed to pull back.  

“It makes my fingers hurt.”

Kurt smothered a laugh inside his mouth and gave his head another shake.  “Suck it up.  You wanted to learn and I’m teaching you.”

Another sigh escaped from between Blaine’s lips, and, under Kurt’s guiding hands, Blaine again pulled the string back as taut as he could manage it while Kurt directed him to hold it in place.  They still weren’t at the point where Kurt was letting him use (and waste) arrows yet.  

“Hold it….”

“My fingers are numb, my hand is cramped, my whole arm feels like it’s been pulled in all directions…”  Blaine complained, a small tremor shaking the bow that originated from him.

“Keep it steady.  We’re not going back until you can hold it for at least ten seconds.”

It took several more tries, and Kurt enduring the most whining he had ever heard out of Blaine, but Blaine finally succeeded in the task and as promised, they returned to their cabins.

It had been a warmer day, as warm as it could get towards the end of January in this place anyhow, and with no patrol to work that afternoon, Kurt had spent it trying to train Blaine on the bow.

It had required all the patience he had.

When they returned to the cabins, the first thing Kurt noticed was that Pudding didn’t come to greet them, and Blaine picked up on that too because he quickly walked to his cabin and called for her inside, and then back to Kurt once the reason she wasn’t greeting them became apparent.

“The puppies are here!”

Kurt hurried over to Blaine’s side and peeked inside.  Laying in the gap between the elevated mattress and the ground was Pudding, a cluster of puppies all whining and clamouring for a teat to drink from.  She wagged her tail lazily when she caught sight of her humans, but didn’t move.  The birth had obviously taken a lot out of her.

The men crept in and knelt by her, Blaine rubbing her head and cooing over her while Kurt silently counted the puppies.

“Eight….”

“Any….?”

Kurt just nodded, looking at the stiff, still body of one puppy off to the side.  “One.  One stillborn, eight live…”

Blaine smiled weakly and continued to praise Pudding as she let her pups feed while Kurt carefully picked up the small, dead puppy and took it outside where he dug a shallow grave in the frozen earth and buried the puppy so it wouldn’t attract any predators.  When he returned, Blaine was still knelt down on the ground, though now was watching Pudding as she licked off each of the pups.

“Can you tell who the dad was?  Was he one of the ones that’s been adopted in town?”

Blaine shook his head, “Can’t really tell… they’re all so tiny and squishy looking.  Cute though…”

They watched over Pudding for a couple more hours, Blaine reveling over his new babies while Kurt just enjoyed watching the man turn into an absolute child around the puppies.  Pudding was very patient with Blaine, letting him hold the pups and letting him lay aside her and them as they snuggled.  

“I didn’t know puppies were blind at birth…” Kurt admitted.

Blaine nodded as he watched the runt of the litter fight its way once again into the fray of its siblings in an attempt to get some milk.  “Deaf too.  Give them a couple weeks and they’ll start to open up… though they won’t see clearly for a few more weeks after that.”

“Are you sure you didn’t want to become a veterinarian when you grew up?”

Blaine turned his head and smiled over and up at Kurt, “I always loved animals… my parents would never let me have one.  Said they were too filthy and didn’t trust me to take care of it… There’s something completely wonderful though about having someone there that’s always happy to see you no matter what… ready to play or cuddle or just be with you.”

“Mmm… it’s a shame they don’t smell better.”

“Pudding smells just fine.”  Blaine turned his attentions back to the dog.  “Don’cha girl?”

A wag of the tail, thumped hard against the ground, and an open jaw that panted towards Blaine was the response, which Blaine took to mean as agreement as he nuzzled the labrador mother.  “Yah. You’re a good smellin’ girl.”

Kurt chuckled and stood up.  “Alright.  I’ll leave you two alone with your babies.  The one with the black patch of unruly fuzz on its head does resemble you after all.”  

Blaine rolled onto his back and grinned up at Kurt, “Jealous?”

“Of Pudding?  Never.  There’s no way I could compete with her.”

“See you tomorrow?”

“Probably.”

News of the puppy birth had all the young children coming to their corner of the community over the next few days and Rachel even had Blaine come in to teach the children about puppies and animal care.   Their usual evening trysts were interrupted both by the invasion from humans visiting at all hours and puppies crying below Blaine’s mattress.  Kurt feigned irritation, but in truth he couldn’t help but enjoy having the puppies around - so sweet, innocent, and adorable.  Their needs were simple - feeding, being cleaned, sleep, and love, and Kurt found himself sitting in Blaine’s cabin with puppies curled up all against and over his lap on several evenings instead of pressing flesh with Blaine.

“I’m going to assume you’re patrolling again during the Valentine’s dance…”  Blaine stated, picking up one of the puppies as it made a break for the door when Pudding was sneaking out to relieve herself three weeks after the puppies had been born.

“You would assume correctly. Ow!”  Kurt was finger wrestling with one of the pups who had decided to try out his canine’s on Kurt’s finger.

Blaine chuckled and reached over to take Kurt’s hand, examining the non-existent bite and then letting Kurt have his hand back.  “But it’s the most romantic of holidays.”

“All the more reason to stay away from it.  There’s a reason most babies are born around the beginning of winter out here.”

“I thought, given how much Beth latches onto you when she see’s you, that you would’ve been a kid person.”

Kurt shrugged.  “Don’t mind kids… don’t like to picture the process of how they come into the world is all.”

“Conception or nine months later?”

“Both.”

They laughed together and puppysat while Pudding took her break.  All of the puppies had been claimed by people in the community and once they were old enough, they would go to their new homes.  For now though, Blaine and Kurt got to enjoy them all.  They still hadn’t figured out who… or what the father was, but at the very least they knew he was brown by the mix of black and brown shades between all the pups.

“Cookie is chewing on your bootlace.” Blaine said, nodding with his head towards Beth’s intended puppy at Kurt’s feet.

“Hey there little girl…”  Kurt reached down to scoop her up.  “... don’t ruin my kicks.”

“Library will be ready to open tomorrow….”

“I know.”  Kurt had known that for awhile and so Blaine bringing it up out of the blue was curious.  He looked over, catching Blaine looking towards the fire distantly. “Why does that upset you?”

Blaine shrugged, “I don’t know… I just think Trent’s finally going to tell me he’s staying is all…”

Kurt snorted and shook his head, “His moving in with Kitty last week wasn’t indication enough?”

“He still hasn’t said it.”

“Not everything needs to be verbalized for it to be real Blaine.”

“It does for me…”

“Well on the plus side, at least now you’ll have more time to dedicate to becoming a less shitty archer.”

“Hey!” Blaine snapped his head up.  “I’ve been working my ass off on improving!”

“Well your ass isn’t what should be working your bow.  There’s your first problem!”

The banter continued, as it generally did, well into the night until Kurt got too tired to keep up and excused himself to his home.  It had been days since he had been intimate with Blaine, and while he didn’t mind given the situation, his body did, and old familiar aches had begun to work back into his muscles and joints.

And old dreams revisited him.

“Wake up Kurt!”

Blaine was there, hovering over Kurt with wide worried honey eyes as Kurt breathed in heavily, ensuring he still had the breath that had seem stripped from him in the blackness he had just been a part of.

“I…”  He didn’t have words for it.  He had thought those dreams were just memories now, but they… SHE came back just as fierce as before.  This time though she had torn out his vocal cords while nibbling on his ear and whispering hate into his ear.  “... I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Shh….”  Blaine sat himself on the edge of Kurt’s bed and drew Kurt into his arms.  Well.  He tried to.  Kurt immediately pulled back and shook his head.

“I’m fine… I don’t need… consolation..”

“You’re sure?”

Kurt crooked up an eyebrow and Blaine stood up with a weak but acknowledging smile.  “Right.  You’re always sure.”

Blaine left and Kurt did manage to recapture sleep that night, though it was restless.  When he awoke he was just glad the day had returned and there was no pressure to sleep.  Once he finished his waking routine, he left the hut but an unfamiliar, non-snow crunch under his boot caused him to look down.

A bouquet of wildflowers.

In the middle of winter.

His brow bunched together in confusion and he knelt down to pick them up once he lifted his boot off them.  They were all still mostly intact and, after ensuring no one was watching him, he inhaled the smell of summer and sighed softly at the nostalgia for the warmer months brought up inside him by that trigger.  His routine interrupted briefly, he set the flowers inside his home and then continued as he normally would have during the day, only to find another set of wildflowers set on his doorstep that night when he returned.

Kurt wasn’t sure if Blaine was playing some kind of joke on him, or trying to romance him, but he wasn’t going to buy into it.

Even if he did enjoy the way the flowers made his hut smell.

Over the course of the next week, random gifts showed up on his doorstep.  Flowers, a little bottle of hand lotion, a handmade card with a can of corn, and even a little silver charm in the shape of an arrowhead with a ribbon running through the clasp.  Each time he glanced around to see if Blaine was watching him as he checked the gifts, and each time he saw no one.  Despite that he still didn’t let himself react to the gift where someone could have seen him.  No sense in letting any spy know that he actually appreciated the trinkets.  Blaine never mentioned the gifts when he was with Kurt, and Kurt made a point of not bringing them up either.

He kept up with his archery lessons with Blaine, who made slow progress but after that week had finally progressed to the point where Kurt was letting him use arrows.

“Steady.  Remember to breath in when you pull back and let your breath go when you release.” Kurt directed, standing behind Blaine as he looked ahead to the tree Kurt had designated as a target.

Blaine’s breathes were too deep though, his hands still not steady enough, so it was no shock to Kurt when Blaine released and the arrow zipped right past the tree and off into the bush.

“Again.”

Blaine used the whole pack of arrows, not hitting the tree once and getting more irritated and more shaken with each shot he took.  Kurt quietly tutted but didn’t comment.  Blaine just needed to hit once to get his muscle memory to start working.  One arrow would start him on the path to real archery training.

“Just relax for a minute.  I’ll go see if there’s any of those arrows you shot laying on the ground that you can reuse.  You’re going to get this.”  Kurt said to Blaine as he walked by, pulling the fur collar of his coat up around his chin and trying to hold back the chilled shiver that was trying to escape from him.

There wasn’t just one laying in the bush.  He found several, but when he moved to collect one of the arrows he mistook a step.

“Ye-ow!”

The arrows he had already collected in his hands went flying into the air and scattered around him as he hit the ground on his back, feet falling out from under him.  The crash of his body was followed by the rustling of branches being quickly moved out of the way and snow being crushed underfoot as Blaine ran up to him.

“Kurt!”

A symphony of curses flew from Kurt’s mouth as he winced in pain before trying to stand up and yelping as pain shot up from both his tailbone and his ankle.

“Here…. here… let me help you.”  Blaine leaned forward and Kurt wrapped an arm around his shoulders, leaning his weight on to the shorter man as he helped lift Kurt up which drew another slew of swears from his normally muted mouth.

“You’re bleeding…”

Kurt followed Blaine’s gaze down to his ankle where blood was seeping out of a cut made on his boots.  Looking over to where he had been laying, the culprit was of his own making - an arrow, now coating in his own blood sitting victoriously in the ice patch he had fallen on.

Blaine helped Kurt hobble back into the hut, which they were thankfully not to far from, and despite Kurt’s insistence that he just needed to rest and bandage the wound up, Blaine ran for the town and the clinic as soon as he made sure Kurt was on the bed and a water bottle beside him.

Kurt took his time to peel his boots off and then his pants, each movement causing sharp pains to snap through him from either his now bruised tailbone or his ankle - sometimes both at the same time.  When he did manage to free his foot though, he secretly thanked that Blaine was so insistent on getting help because it was clear the arrow had penetrated his flesh deeply, probably just missing the achilles tendon, and would need cleaning out and stitching.  

Kitty was the one who came back with Blaine and grinned in delighted amusement when she saw Kurt laying back on his bed with only his thermal layer on and hiked up to his knees.  Thermal layers didn’t leave much to the imagination.

“Well now… I can see why David set his sights on you big boy.”  She winked and set down the kit she was holding on the end of the bed, opening it and sifting through it to get the supplies she was going to need.

Kurt just rolled his eyes and then shook his head to dismiss the questioning look in Blaine’s eyes.  

“You should check on the puppies and Pudding anyhow Blaine.”

Blaine hesitated for awhile until Kitty shooed him away.  “Go.  I don’t like audiences unless it’s to appreciate my killer dance moves.”

She took her time, and Kurt watched it all quietly, but Kitty did a good job and had him cleaned up and stitched up in no time.  “I know you like to pretend you’re a badass Hummel, but so I don’t have to clean up all the blood you’ll spill everywhere, you need to stay off that for a couple days while it binds back up - and then you need to take it easy after that.”

“Thanks Kitty.”

“My job.”  She shrugged and then packed up her gear.  She was about to go when she caught sight of one of the bouquets of wildflowers.  “Hey…”

He laughed it off, “Yah.  Silly huh?”

“Silverleaf Psoralea, Blazingstars, Bedstraw, Fleabane….” She noted, tapping each of the mentioned flowers in turn as she listed them off.

“Right.  Any use to you?”

“They all are actually…”  She murmured quietly.  “.... How did you get these?”

“On my doorstep… I think Blaine’s trying to win me over with gifts or something…”

Her eyes travelled then to the charm.  “Huh.”

“You can have those if you want.  They’re no use to me.”

“No.. no… you keep them.  Silverleaf makes a good tea for constipation - something you’ll suffer if I need to kick you up the ass if you leave this bed before I said you could.” She said, the humor returning to her voice as she looked back to Kurt with a plied on smirk.

He smiled back.  Kurt was beginning to appreciate that Kitty was more than just snark and spazzing.  She really did have a good mind and cared - even if it didn’t show as well as it did in most people.

Blaine brought him both supper and the puppies that night, insisting that puppies could cure all kinds of ills with their kisses.

“They’re going to make my place stink Blaine.” Kurt protested with a grin.

“They’re going to take your mind off the fact that you’re hurting.”  Blaine stated, drawing a finger over the bandage on Kurt’s ankle.  “I’m sorry I missed.  If I hadn’t missed, you wouldn’t have fallen on it…”

“You’ll learn… then you’ll kill me a nice juicy buck and make it up to me.”

“With venison stew?”

“Forget the stew.  You’ll fry me up a steak.”

Blaine chuckled and shook his head, drawing the blanket up over Kurt.  “I don’t think I have the killer instinct in me Kurt.”

“Then it’s a miracle you’ve survived so long.”

“No miracle….”  Blaine said softly, snuggling a puppy in his lap from where he sat on the edge of the bed.  “... just made friends with the right people.”

Kurt didn’t make mention of the fact that those people were ready to toss Trent away when he got hurt.  He didn’t think Blaine would have lasted very long if it had been him under the quad and not Trent.  No one but Blaine would have fought so hard to be heard and get help for a friend.

Being stuck in bed was difficult, and why Kurt avoided getting sick at all costs.  This time though, Blaine was insistent company - going so far as to have Pudding and the puppies keep Kurt company when Blaine had to make runs into town for meals and to visit with Trent.  They read books together, listened to music together, and Kurt watched as Blaine worked diligently to try and train the puppies.  When his two days were up though, Kurt was happy to get up.  He was not good at staying still so long.

He refused Blaine’s insistent offer of a shoulder to lean against while he hobbled into town, and Blaine remained fixed at his side during the longer than normal trip, watching him with honey eyes that sparkled with concern.  As they came in, they passed by Mercede’s office where a group of individuals had just returned from a short scavenging trip that Kurt was supposed to have gone on.  Karofsky was among those that had gone, and fixed Kurt with a worried gaze which Kurt deftly ignored as he continued onto the clinic for his check-up.

“Let me guess….” Kitty started as she saw the pair enter “... the mule here refused any help in walking?”

Blaine nodded her way and Kurt just huffed, sitting himself down on a bench, “Just check it out and make sure it isn’t infected.”

“Yes your highness.”  Was the snappy retort as she came and knelt down, unwrapping the bandaging and carefully inspecting his ankle, pressing in a few places, and then nodding.  “Looks good…. but it could still open easily.  You will take it easy and if you refuse someone helping you walk, you will use a cane or crutch for the next few days.”

Kurt rolled his eyes, but instead of getting a look of returned amusement from Blaine, he got a serious look instead.  Figures Blaine would take Kitty’s side on that.

Kurt accepted a cane from the back room and left, sending Blaine ahead to get their meals ready so that by the time he walked his crippled self to the kitchen, he could just sit at a table.  On the way though, he stopped to lean up against the side of one of the apartments to catch his breath.

“What the hell David!”  

Kurt’s eyes snapped over to the middle of the road where Kitty had left the clinic and intercepted Karofsky.  He was in their blind spot from where he was leaning and couldn’t help but hear them.

“Well that’s no way to say hello when I’ve just gotten back from -”

“You’re the one who was stealing from my indoor garden!”

The accusation seemed to catch Karofsky off guard as he didn’t make any response.  Kurt’s interest was definitely piqued now and he shuffled in a little bit more to ensure he stayed out of their sight as he snooped.

“Don’t you dare try to lie to me either.  I saw the flowers at Kurt’s place.  You’ve been stealing from me in an attempt to woo him.  Are you completely stupid?”

Oh.

“Kitty… come on… I just… I don’t know how else….”  A sigh.

“He doesn’t feel that way about you.  He’s not going to.  How many times do you have to hear no before it sinks into that dense skull of yours?”

“There’s no one else though Kitty….”

“Oh please.  There’s over three hundred people around here.  Statistically that means around 30 of them have to be queer in some way.  Kurt is NOT the only one.”

“You think I haven’t considered that?  There’s me… Kurt… Santana, Brittany, Berry’s dads, Unique…”

“That’s only seven dumbass.”

“So what am I supposed to do?  Wait until someone else outs themselves?  What if the other twenty three are kids right now or super old?  Kurt’s my age...we’re from the same place….”

“... you beat him up.”

More silence, then finally.

“You’ve found happiness…. I just… I just want the chance to find it too.”

“Stealing the plants I’m growing to help everyone to try and seduce a guy you made bleed isn’t going to make you happy David.”

“I miss you you know….”

“You miss having someone around.  Just because I’m living with Trent now doesn’t mean I don’t care about you any less, but David, you need to let him go.  It’s not going to happen.”

“I have to…”

“And stealing a charm off my bracelet to give to him too?  That’s even worse.”

“.... I’m sorry.”

Footsteps, then another sigh.  Kurt waited for a moment to ensure the conversation was truly over and then hobbled to the kitchen to meet up with Blaine as his chest pounded.  

“You okay?  I knew I should have stayed back to help you.” Blaine said, hopping up from the table he was sitting at in an attempt to try and help Kurt sit.  An attempt which was pulled away from.

“I can do it myself Blaine.” Kurt grumbled as he awkwardly shuffled into his seat, ignoring the curious glances of other community members as he slowly got himself comfortable.

Blaine went back to his seat and quietly watched Kurt as he ate.  

Kurt’s mind was too busy though to even focus on what he was eating or to summon up the energy to tell Blaine to stop staring.  For the first time he felt truly bad for Karofsky, and, at the same time, completely idiotic for assuming that Blaine was the one sending him those gifts.  Of course it had been Karofsky.  He had, after all, assumed that Kurt wanted romance and someone as dense as Kitty had noted Karofsky was would presume romance could only be had in the form of gifts.  

He should have been upset about being duped like that, angry that he was so stupid to assume that Blaine was the one sending him gifts.

Instead he was disappointed.

“You’ve been awfully quiet all day… I mean… moreso than you normally are.”  Blaine noted that evening, his fingers sliding once over the fresh bandage on Kurt’s ankle.

“Just tired I guess.”

Blaine snorted, “Right.  You force yourself to stay awake night and day and insist you’re fine and you’ve been sleeping just fine for the past couple days and now you say you’re tired?”

Kurt rolled his eyes up and sighed.  He should have come up with a more plausible excuse.  “I’ve just been lost in MY OWN thoughts.”

“Which you’re not going to share of course.”

“Right.”

More silence.  More conflicting thoughts.  Self depreciation for not figuring out what should have been obvious.  Irritation at Blaine for not having been the one giving him the gifts.  Annoyance with himself for being disappointed that he wished it had been Blaine.  Guilt for not acknowledging Karofsky’s attempt to not be a total jerk.  More self depreciation for feeling guilty when it came to the guy that beat him up.  

His head spun like that for over a day until he took all his vexation on a tree with all the arrows he had.  Kurt would have to make more arrows… a lot more arrows, and clear off the tree which looked like a flora version of a porcupine with all the fletched shafts sticking out of it at all angles, but he had at least calmed himself inside.

When Blaine walked by, returning from the town, and saw Kurt standing in front of the tree huffing for breath, he didn’t even flinch.  No comment - curious or witty.  He just looked at the tree for a moment, dropped his head down and stayed in place a few feet away from Kurt.

“He must have told you.”

Blaine nodded slowly, eyes fixed on the snow around his boots.

“You knew it was coming.”

“I did…”

“You should be happy for him.”

“I am.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”  Kurt grunted, leaning over to pick up his cane and hobbling towards Blaine’s shack.

“He’s going to run the library and help with the school.”

“Makes sense.” Kurt said, sitting down on the ground inside of Blaine’s hut by the door and letting the puppies crawl on him in greeting.  It didn’t take long for little rough tongues to lash all over his fingers and clean them off.

Blaine sat on the bed, slumped over and ignoring Pudding for the moment as she hopped up to sit aside him.  “Just doesn’t feel right… it’s not like his tattoo will come off but he won’t be a Warbler anymore… and…”  a sigh, “I don’t even know what I’m going on about.”

“A tattoo doesn’t determine who you are or what you’ll do Blaine.”

“I know.”

“And you said yourself, you got it under the effects of alcohol.”

“I would’ve gotten it sober.”

“Is he your only friend in that pack of birds?”

Blaine summoned up a small smile at the quip about the Warblers and shook his head.  “No.  But he’s my best friend of them all.”

“So make a new best friend.”

Honey eyes looked over the hands clasped together Blaine was leaning his chin against, “You say that like it’s easy.  How many best friends have you had in life?”

Kurt looked away then.  Caught.  He let a few puppies burrow into his lap and doze off there before finally saying anything more.  “Would you say all of the Warblers are your friends.”

“No.”

“Most?”

“Not sure.”

“What do you mean… not sure?” Kurt looked back over, eyebrow peaked.

“There’s always been a conflict in how we operate and what we do, but status quo has remained because there’s never any agreement… it’s only gotten worse though over the years and there’s little groups all within the whole of the Warbler group.”

“Why don’t people just go off and do what they want to then?  Why should they have to stick with the group?”

“Because… it’s all a lot of us have known for a long time.  We’re like brothers… even though we might not all like one another, we stick together.”

“Well that’s a damn stupid reason for sticking together.” Kurt huffed, picking up Cookie and snuggling her against his chest as she was getting pushed out of his lap by the bigger puppies.

“Why do you stay here Kurt?”

“What?”

“Why do you stay here?  You don’t seem to get along with anyone really or even want to be doing what you’re doing… Whenever you’re out you seem miserable.”

Kurt grumbled to himself with a roll of his eyes, “Fine.  Point taken.  I don’t know what else I’d do.”

Blaine nodded and finally put a hand between Pudding’s ears, scratching between them.  “Valentine’s dance tomorrow.”

“Patrolling.”

“Even with your foot?”

“Even with my foot.”

Kurt avoided town the next day until he needed to be on patrol.  People always got excessively cute with one another during the day they assumed was Valentines (again, by his count that was a couple weeks ago), and it sent his gag reflex into overdrive.  He didn’t have the stomach to put up with it, or the little fluttering hearts the kids at school had cut out of paper and decorated the whole town with.

It was one holiday that should have gone under with The Tides as far as he was concerned, especially since his father had always joked it had been created by card companies.

The positive side of things was that because everyone was at the dance, there wasn’t anyone else on the streets he shuffled down along, insistent on walking without the cane so his leg didn’t get too weak.  It was quiet, and rather mild outside for February, which meant he didn’t have to keep his fur hood up to keep his ears warm.  

“Mind if I walk with you?”

The voice always made him tense up.  No matter how long it had been, he would never be completely comfortable around Karofsky. “Fine.”

For awhile, they walked in silence.  David had his weapon of choice, an axe, swinging lazily off to the side in his hand opposite Kurt.  

“Why aren’t you at the dance?”

“Patrolling.”

Kurt’s eyebrows quirked up.  “Usually I end up stuck with some kid who lost a draw for patrolling during dances.”

“I knew you weren’t going to go… so I figured there was no point in my going.”

“Karofsky… - ”

“David.”

“David… You shouldn’t have given me all that stuff… and you should take back the stuff you stole from Kitty.  It’s not right.”

Karofsky nodded aside him.  “I know.  I just… I didn’t know what else to do.”

“We’re not going to be a thing David.  I’m sorry.”

They continued walking, David keeping his pace slow to account for Kurt’s handicap, and didn’t speak.  Eventually Kurt finally admitted to himself that he needed a break before his leg fell out from under him and went to lean against a railing by the kitchen, David following suite beside him.

“He’s leaving you know.”

“Hmm?”

“Blaine.  In the spring he’ll be gone and you’ll be alone.”

“What does he have to do with anything?”

Karofsky sighed slowly and deeply.  “I know Kurt… You’ve been as happy… well, less angry anyhow.  I see the way he looks at you… there’s no way you’d put up with him being so close if there wasn’t more going on….”

“Blaine and I aren’t a thing David.”

“Maybe not… but once he’s gone, you’ll be alone again, and I think you’ll find it’ll be harder to go back to than you’re assuming it will be.”

“I never stopped being alone David.”

“I don’t understand why you put up these walls Kurt… I know some of us, me in particular, have hurt you in the past… but we wouldn’t anymore…. You don’t need to be afraid of anyone, least of all me.”

Kurt looked to his side, eyes intently looking back at Karofsky who looked so hopeful with that little speech of his.  “Have you ever considered David, that maybe I isolate myself from you all not because I’m afraid of you, but because you all should be afraid of me?”

That seemed to take a little wind out of Karofsky as he sucked back a breath and his eyes opened all the way, “What do you mean by that?”

Kurt stood up and turned himself to face the other man.  “After you hurt me, after my dad died, I couldn’t sleep.  I stayed awake at night, thinking about ways to hurt you and the others who attacked me with you.  I came up with hundreds of ways to hurt you back, each more gruesome than the last.  Each one designed to make you suffer.”

As Kurt continued, he couldn’t help but smirk at the sight of Karofsky’s adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

“I didn’t take up archery initially to hunt.  I took it up because I thought it would be the best way to initially incapacitate you before I tortured you.  I had this grand plan, and I had absolutely nothing to lose anymore.”

“So…”  Karofsky’s voice squeaked, making him swallow down his obvious discomfort before continuing. “So… why didn’t you?”

Kurt looked back away, “Noah was off trying to collect firewood and Quinn had just had Beth… she cried all the time and Quinn was crying because she didn’t know how to make Beth stop crying.  I was angry.  I hadn’t been able to get a solid nights sleep in months and now there was this baby just screaming and screaming… add to it her mother blubbering as well.  I grabbed Beth, intending to take her to some mother that knew more than Quinn… and then… she stopped.  She snuggled up against me and fell asleep.  No one dared take her away from me in fear she’d start wailing again… so I held her all night… and as she slept, so did I…  Every night for a month I went over to Quinn’s to hold her at night so Quinn could sleep and, in that time, I would be able to as well…. eventually I regained my sanity and with it the remembrance of my father and what kind of person he was.  I couldn’t do dishonor to his memory by hurting anyone else…”

Karofsky’s adam’s apple bobbed one again, and he was quiet for a moment until he seemed sure that Kurt was done talking.  “Well… I guess…..”

“If anything were to happen again though, I know how easily I’d snap.  It’s better that I’m away.”

“Kurt….”

“And even if all that doesn’t dissuade you, the fact that, even now, when I think of you I still remember all the ways I came up with to kill you should.”

Quiet.  Then finally Karofsky nodded once and Kurt felt like a well had burst inside him at the miracle of getting through to the big, daft man finally.   

“So Blaine…?”

“Is going in the spring, like you said.”

“Okay.”

They leaned back against the rails for a few more minutes, until Karofsky excused himself to continue patrolling around town.  Once he left, Kurt breathed relief and let his eyes drift up to the moon hanging low overhead.  

Lying exhausted him.  

That part about Beth had been true at least.  Everyone knew about Kurt’s weird baby whispering ability, but Kurt had never thought up ways to kill anyone.  Even in his worst moments, he had only ever wished he had died along with his father.  He had to give himself credit though for coming up with something like that to scare off Karofsky on the fly though.  Maybe now Karofsky would back off.

As for Blaine…

Well that was something Kurt was going to have to come to terms with whether or not he wanted to.  There could be nothing between them because Kurt couldn’t handle one more thing in his life ending.  If there was nothing between them, then nothing would end between them.  

At least that made sense in his mind up until this moment when he actually thought about it.  

Sometimes his subconscious was a moron.

Kurt shoved off from the railing and hobbled towards the main hall, hearing it well before he got near it.  Music was being played in there.  No tune he could distinguish, especially with the din of voices and stomps of people dancing drowning it out.  He didn’t get too close though, holding back and just watching silhouettes laughing and talking outside of the opened doors which had even more figures dancing and swaying inside.  Kurt forced his hips to stay still the instant they tried to move to the beat and just watched from his place for a few minutes.

It was after those few minutes that a figure seemed to take notice of Kurt and started walking his way.  It didn’t take long for Kurt to see it was Blaine - few others had curls like that, bouncing against his head with each step.

“Hey stranger!”

“Hey.”

Blaine had his hands shoved deep into his pockets, the cold out where Kurt had been standing much more insistent than in the hall where warm bodies in motion probably kept it quiet warm in comparison.  “I thought you don’t come to these.”

“I don’t.”

“Patrolling?”

Kurt nodded.

“And yet you still ended up here.”

Kurt chuckled and gave his head a shake, “Don’t make it sound like I’m ready to take up dancing.”

Blaine laughed and his eyes gave off a twinkle as the moonlight bounced off them.  “Like you could dance with that bum foot of yours.”

Kurt arched an eyebrow, catching on to Blaine’s mischievous tone, “Are you trying to lure me into dancing with you to prove that I’m not broken?”

“Maybe…”  Honey eyes flickered with amusement.

“Machismo strategies like that might work on the average guy out here Blaine, but not me.”

Blaine’s smile didn’t falter as he kept looking at Kurt, “You’re not an average guy.”

The smile was returned, “No, I’m not.”

With a glance over his shoulder at the party behind him, Blaine asked, “How much patrolling is needed right now?”

“Blaine…”

“I mean it.”  Amber eyes locked with blue once more.  “There’s no threat out here and your leg is hurt anyhow….”

“Look.  I didn’t watch a lot of horror movies back before The Tides, but I know underestimating a potential threat gets people killed.”

“Good thing that only happens in the movies then huh?”

Kurt pursed his lips together, eyes scrunching up at he looked at Blaine.  He had never abandoned his post, and as much as a little romp in the sack sounded appealing, he wasn’t about to risk the lives of others for it.

Blaine, thankfully, picked up on that.  

“Alright, alright… but at least let me walk around in circles with you.  God knows I couldn’t be any more bored doing that than I was in there watching Kitty and Trent grind against one another.”

Kurt laughed and nodded, starting to walk and having Blaine join him at his side.  “Might be some baby Warblers if that keeps up!”

Blaine’s nose wrinkled up, “Weird to think about…”

“Them having kids?”

“Trent doing grown-up stuff.  When you’re with a group of guys all the same age you tend to digress a little bit too easily into a more juvenile mind set.”

“Mmmm…”  Kurt could understand that.

“Oh!  You’ll never guess who managed to end up dancing together!”

Kurt looked to his side, “Just tell me.”

“I FINALLY managed to convince Sam to ask Mercedes to dance.”

Kurt was impressed.  “Really? That only took years to happen….”

“I convinced him that he was drunk enough to do it even though I had only been giving him watered down apple cider.”

Kurt laughed.  “And that was all it took?”

Blaine nodded, a triumphant grin on his face, “They didn’t leave each other’s arms all evening.  They’ll make great looking mocha babies.”

Kurt rolled his eyes.  He had no doubt there would be a baby boom in the fall.  There always was after all.  Only so much to do in the winter and dances tended to bring out the sex fiends in people.  Most of the kids born post-Tides were born in October.

“Guess we don’t have to worry about that huh?”

“Really Blaine?  A gay guys not making babies joke?”  Kurt snorted and shook his head.

“I know.  It was weak.  I’ve been hanging out with Sam too much and my sense of humor has suffered for it.”

They laughed, bantered back and forth, and walked for the rest of the night well past the death of the party.  Kurt couldn’t remember the last time he had enjoyed patrolling, if he ever had before.

  
  
  



	15. Chapter 14: Good-bye

_**“He wept, and it felt as if the tears were cleansing him, as if his body needed to empty itself.” - Lois Lowry, Messenger** _

Kurt watched as Blaine blew warm air into the pocket between his hands.  They were out on a scavenging run and Blaine had made the mistake earlier of saying it was a nice day.  Now they were all huddled inside a house together trying to stay warm while Noah set up a fire.  

“Ahh… don’t anyone use that upstairs toilet.  I left my mark there!” Santana said triumphantly as she joined the ground again, descending the staircase.

Noses were wrinkled up and brows arched.  Blaine looked over at Kurt in question and Kurt just shook his head.

Santana could be vile, and it was best to leave it at that.

“Got it!” Noah yelled as a flame burst up several feet away in the fireplace.  Everyone moved in and let the heat fall over them.  Kurt shut his eyes and let himself bask until he was heated back up and then stood up.  “I’ll go collect blankets so we can all sleep here tonight.”

Finding blankets wasn’t actually that hard.  It was finding blankets that hadn’t been overtaken by bedbugs or used by wild animals that was more difficult.  Thankfully, the owners of this particular home had a linen closet with a good supply of blankets and sheets that had been hidden away and still even smelled a little bit like laundry detergent.  He even found a stash of pillows in the closet - a special treat for the night.

“So all I’m saying curls… is that you spend a night with my girl and then her and I can have ourselves a kid.  It’s not like it would be too hard on your part… well it would, but that’s kind of the point…”

Kurt walked in, eyebrows raising sky high as he heard Santana’s words and then saw Blaine, looking absolutely aghast and trying to seek out an escape route.

“Honestly Santana?”

She turned her head towards Kurt, “Well, yeah.  He’s leaving anyhow so it wouldn’t make things all awkward if he daddied a baby for Brit and I.”

“Ugh.  Leave him alone…”  Kurt grunted, handing out the blankets to Sam and Noah, who both seemed rather entertained by the conversation they had been witnessing, and then to Blaine and Santana.  

“Yah… as enticing Brittany is, I’m sure, to most people….” Blaine started, trying to find the right words to let Santana down.

“You’re queerer than a three dollar bill.  I know.  All the more reason to do it.  Spread your seed!”

Kurt winced a little.  He wasn’t sure how many other people knew about Blaine’s sexuality, but the lack of surprise on Sam and Noah’s faces suggested they knew and didn’t care.

“I’m sure you’ll find someone.”  Blaine said, shutting her down finally.  He looked over to Kurt then, thanking him for the blanket and pillow which all of them had begun to spread out.  

“Any of your birdie friends have quality seed?”

That made Blaine cough a little, look to Kurt for support, getting only a shrug, and then looked back at Santana, “Frankly… I, well I can’t speak for all of them, and I wouldn’t suggest the one I could speak for.”

“Hmm… Bet a Wolf Pack member would have been all over it.” Santana tutted as she stripped down to her thermalwear and climbed into her makeshift bed.

“She scares me.” Blaine whispered over to Kurt as Kurt slid into his own bed, right beside Blaine’s.

“She should.”  Kurt whispered back and winked with a smile.

He had allowed Noah to stand watch, much to Noah’s surprise.  As the winter bore on, Kurt found that sleep, when it was peaceful, was actually quite enjoyable.  He guessed he had Blaine to thank for that, though he’d never say so out loud.

Kurt was woken up a few hours later by Noah, not even realizing he’d fallen asleep and grumbled acknowledgement.  It was his turn on shift.  He went to sit up and found that Blaine, in that few hours, had managed to sneak up alongside him and had an arm held over Kurt.

An arm which was unceremonious lifted off him and dumped back onto the scrunched up mess of Blaine’s bed, causing the curly headed man to whine softly in his sleep, his eyes crinkling up in unconscious disapproval.

“Ain’t he just a ball of adorable.” Noah said overhead and Kurt turned to look up at him.

“Got something to say to me Puckerman?”

Hands were held high and Noah backed up a step, “What?!  No man… just making observations.  Going to sleep now alright?”

Kurt gave him a short nod and shuffled out of his bed, slipping his outerwear back on, slinging his arrow pack on over his back and grabbing his bow as he sat himself in front of the window, spending the next few hours listening to the symphony of snoring and wheezing coming from the floor of the room they were in until they each woke up, had their breakfast, and braved the aftermath of the blizzard from the night before.

House to house they went, collecting as per usual until there wasn’t enough space left for them to carry anything back with.  Trent had requested more fiction books for the library, complaining that there was too many how-to books and medical books and not enough to entice creative minds.  Micheal, as always, requested any antibiotics and medication they could come across.  Kitty wanted herbs and spices from the kitchens they ransacked, and Rachel had complained that the students were woefully short on crayons.  

“Found that mesophilic culture shit you were looking for Blaine!” Santana called out in one house, causing Blaine to run over.

Kurt looked down at his own list, not seeing mesophilic culture on it anywhere.  Either that was something Blaine was personally after or it was a favour to someone.  In any case, Kurt didn’t even know offhand what mesophilic culture was.

“Graham crackers!” Santana called to Blaine at another home, and again he ran over.

“Planning to make something?” Kurt asked when they were walking again.

Blaine blinked a few times, “Well… not me… Brittany actually.  A secret.”

“Ah… for Santana.  Gotcha.  Clever getting Santana to help with her own surprise.” Kurt mused.

Blaine chuckled softly and just nodded.  

They didn’t get back to the forest where they had left the forest until close to nightfall, and then just opted to leave for the village that night as no one wanted to stay overnight in the frozen outdoors any longer than they had to.

By the time they got in the next morning, Kurt barely made it to his hut before he passed out.  He had clearly grown too used to getting a regular nights sleep.

When he woke up this time, he discovered he had been covered in puppies - several of which were licking his face raw.

“Augh…”  He covered his face up and sat up, causing the puppies to roll down the bed a bit where they began to play with one another as if nothing had interrupted them.  From the end of the bed, Pudding looked at Kurt and wagged her tail against the bed.  Blaine, the jerk, was no where in sight.

“So apparently I’m dog sitting.”  Kurt grumbled as he wiped the sleep from his eyes.

Despite being outwardly grouchy about it, Kurt knew he only had so many days left with the pups.  They were weaned and ready to go to their new homes.  All that was left was for Blaine to give the okay to their new owners to come and get them.  He spent the morning playing with them, mostly wrestling with his hands - they needed to be warriors he decided.

When Blaine returned, he was carrying a phone, one that Kurt knew didn’t have any music on it and handed it over to Kurt.

“For you to record yourself singing for me.”

Kurt arched his brows up as he looked at the device in his hand.  He had forgotten all about Blaine’s request for a song, but he did seem to recall not agreeing, though he didn’t say no either.  

“I don’t know if your ears can stand the torture…”

Blaine chuckled and sat on the edge of Kurt’s bed, scooping up the closest puppy and nuzzling his face into the baby-fine fur with an appreciative hum.  “Your voice is far from torture.  Please?”

Kurt sighed and set the phone to his side.  “Do I have to do it right now?”

“No… just… before I go?  Please?”

Kurt nodded.  He had no idea what he would sing, but he was sure he could think up something - even if it was itsy bitsy spider just to appease Blaine.  He had lots of time to figure it out anyhow.

Except, as soon as he thought that, the days seemed to go faster and faster.  The pups were adopted out, leaving Blaine and Kurt to share Pudding, who seemed happy to be the only dog around to get attention.  The first little buds appeared on the deciduous trees in the area, even though snow still lined the ground, and people were already talking about Easter celebrations.

Blaine was still awful at archery, but at least now he could at least hit a tree.  Trent was walking without any help, though would forever have a very noticeable limp, and Kurt… well Kurt’s heart ached every time he saw a new sign of spring forcing its way into his sight.  

It was when Kurt saw the snow begin to melt that he grabbed the phone Blaine had given him and hid himself away in his hut.  For an hour he stared at the phone, trying to figure out what to sing.  He didn’t want to sing anything that was already on one of the other phones.  Kurt wanted something that couldn’t be compared to what Blaine already had.

There was only one choice.

He pressed the buttons Blaine had shown him and then took in a shaky breath when he saw the red button flashing to tell him he was being recorded.

“There’s a song… a song my mom used to sing to me when I was growing up… It’s the only reason I think I remember her voice even now because when I hear that song in my head, it’s her voice that’s singing it.  When she died, I used to sing myself to sleep with it… and when my dad died… I sung it for the last time… anyhow…”

He had to swallow back his tears then.  He knew the song by heart, even though he hadn’t sung it for years.  With a shuddering breath, he began.

Oh yeah, I'll tell you something  
I think you'll understand  
When I'll say that something  
I wanna hold your hand  
I wanna hold your hand  
I wanna hold your hand

Oh please, say to me  
You'll let me be your man  
And please, say to me  
You'll let me hold your hand  
I'll let me hold your hand  
I wanna hold your hand

And when I touch you I feel happy  
Inside  
It's such a feeling that my love  
I can't hide  
I can't hide  
I can't hide

Yeah, you've got that something  
I think you'll understand  
When I'll say that something  
I wanna hold your hand  
I wanna hold your hand  
I wanna hold your hand

And when I touch you I feel happy  
Inside  
It's such a feeling that my love  
I can't hide  
I can't hide  
I can't hide

Yeah, you've got that something  
I think you'll understand  
When I'll feel that something  
I wanna hold your hand  
I wanna hold your hand  
I wanna hold your hand  
I wanna hold your hand

Kurt hit the button again once he was done and began sobbing softly.  It was the first time he had cried openly since… since he didn’t even know when.  On one hand it brought back all the memories of his mother and father back to the forefront of his mind.  On the other hand, it was exactly the right song to sing.  He certainly didn’t know how to tell Blaine how he felt, and wasn’t willing to have that type of conversation with him, but he could at least sing it and let the other man read between the lines.

Once he had calmed himself, Kurt dropped the phone off to Blaine’s home, setting it on the bed.  Blaine was out - probably helping with one of the story times in the library that had become quite popular among the children there.  Blaine was phenomenal at doing different voices and even acted out some of the scenes as he read them.  The kids loved it.

Sometimes Kurt would sneak in to watch him under the pretense of building more shelves for future book use.  It didn’t matter whether Blaine was reading a book about pirates or princesses - he was always animated and always put a smile on all the kids faces.

Who was Kurt kidding?  Hiding his face away from the crowd, he would be smiling too.

“Kurt..?”

Lost in his daydreams, Kurt had spent the rest of the afternoon shooting up into the tree’s, knocking down pinecones.  Rachel wanted some for some kind of craft she was going to do with the kids, and while it would have been easier and more efficient to just shake the tree and let them fall, it was more therapeutic to just shoot them down.

“What is it Blaine?” Kurt responded, targeting his next pinecone.

“I got… well… I listened to….”

Kurt didn’t dare look at him.  He didn’t want to see the disappointment or the humor Blaine must have felt.  He was the one who asked for a song after all.  Kurt wasn’t going to give it another try in the hopes it would somehow be better.

“It was beautiful Kurt… Thank you.”

The arrow swished through the air and the only indication that it hit its target was a rustle and then a small thump on the ground where the pinecone landed.  

“Won’t be long until your Warblers come back for you.  I’ll bet they’re already on their way.”  Kurt lined up another shot.

Slushy snow slopped behind him as Blaine came up beside him and set a hand on his shoulder. Months ago he would have flinched.  Now the gesture seemed as normal as anything.  “They probably are.”

“You can get back to your life and….”  Another arrow escaped and a snap and shudder from the tree marked another success. “... forget about our quaint little place away from all the excitement you’re used to.”

“Hmm…”  Blaine’s eyes followed the next arrow Kurt aimed.  “... what about you?  Will you go back to Karofsky?”

“What?!” Kurt’s arrow left the bow, but this time all that followed was a crunch as it hit some bushes as Kurt turned to look at Blaine incredulously.  “What on earth are you talking about?”

Blaine, for his part, looked surprised that Kurt would respond that way.  “I’ve overheard you… talk to him a couple times… I’ve seen him leave gifts… it’s like he’s trying to win you back.”

Kurt involuntarily made a small retching sound and shook his head, “I have never, ever, been with anyone else Blaine.”

“But, you must have had other lovers… other…”

“I’ve been with one man Blaine.”  Kurt looked away and pulled the last arrow from his pack.

“So… yah… me and that one other man…”

“Check your math Blaine.  One means only one.”

Blaine was quiet then, the realization coming over him as Kurt took his final shot and then slipped his bow over his back as he went to collect the dropped pinecones and toss them into the now empty pack.

“You mean I….?” Blaine’s voice was accented by a tremor as he posed the question, locked in the same place Kurt had been shooting from.

“Yes.”

“And I….”

“Just yes Blaine.”  Kurt looked back at his pallid face, eyes gone wide with shock, “It’s not like there’s a gay bar out here I can check out - and Karofsky has, and always will be, a definite no in my life.”

“But I was horrible Kurt… I didn’t know…. and…”

Kurt rolled his eyes, “Blaine, don’t worry about it.  I’m not some silly romantic like I was as a kid.  I didn’t have any expectations.  Hell, I’m surprised it’s happened for me at all.  And you’ve been more than alright since that first time, so don’t worry about it.”

Blaine meekly nodded, then managed to squeak out, “I’m going to go… check the radio… it’s almost the time of day they said they’d be transmitting at when they got back….”

Kurt just nodded and continued gathering the pinecones, filling up his pack as much as he could and then making the delivery to the school.  The front of the schoolhouse already had the snow melted, exposing the swampy frozen bits of grass underneath.  He kicked at that bit of grass, angry at it for existing, angry that it dared to show.

Angry at himself for falling for Blaine when all throughout the winter he had told himself not to.

“Hey Kurt!”  Mercedes sing-song voice called out after him when he was on his way back.  She asked him to complete a few chores around town that only she trusted him with.  Of course, when it came to Mercedes, a few chores was more like a full page list.  

Coyotes had been spotted around the herds and she wanted some snares and traps put in place to protect the livestock.

There was a tractor she wanted him to look at to prepare for spring planting.

She wanted him to help show some new workers how to stitch saddle leather together properly.

His opinion was needed on the placement of a new watchtower.

And the list went on.

Over the next few days, Kurt helped Mercedes with the list inbetween hunting and patrolling.  Blaine seemed to keep his distance, clearly put off by the fact that Kurt was just a lowly virgin when he had met him.  At least, that’s what Kurt assumed.

“They’re… they’re here.”

Kurt looked up from petting Pudding, forcing his eyes as best they could not to betray any emotion.

“You go tomorrow then?”

Blaine nodded. “Can I… Can I ask you to spend the evening with me?  Please?”

Kurt stood up, “I have some things I need to finish for Mercedes and -”

“Please Kurt.”

“Alright.”

Blaine beamed and left him alone then, skipping off to do god knew what and leaving Kurt to wonder first of all when evening began in Blaine’s mind and if he was expecting anything of Kurt.

So Kurt stepped out into a place he hadn’t in months, just yards away from his hut, and dug into the still frozen dirt with every ounce of strength he had in him.  What took a few minutes in the fall, took him nearly an hour in the thaw of spring, but he managed to find what he was looking for.

The can of peaches.

With the sun on the horizon, he decided to go over to Blaine’s lest he lose his nerve.  There were only so many hours left of him after all, before….

Kurt couldn’t even think it.

The door opened and Blaine beamed, sending Pudding outside and opening the door fully for Kurt.

“Is that…?”

“The peaches you gave me… yeah… I thought it would make a nice treat.”

Blaine just grinned, and as Kurt set the can down, he noticed the fire was burning exceptionally hot and there were pots and kettles all around it, all with water in various states of boiling.  Glancing further around, he saw that Blaine had been busy.  Where he normally had the cargo bins sitting, was now an open pit in the ground that he most certainly would have had to been working on for awhile to get that big.  Certainly longer than just the afternoon.  It was lined with an old tarp and halfway full of steaming water.

“What… is that…?”

“For you.”  Blaine said, taking a bubbling pot and dumping it in with the rest of the water.  “You never did get hypothermia this winter but I thought you deserved a hot bath anyhow.”

“But….”  Kurt’s eyes went round as he stared at the makeshift tub.  He couldn’t come up with any arguments as to why he shouldn’t take advantage of the gesture and Blaine was looking at him so earnestly.  With a shrug of his shoulders, he let his coat drop to the ground and then peeled out of his clothes and thermal layers before dipping a toe into the water.

It was delightly hot.

“I had to borrow pots and kettles from everyone I knew so you’d better enjoy it.”

He slipped one foot in, and then the next, before sitting himself down into the small spot and letting his porcelain skin turn rose.  Steam drifted all around his upper body and face, and before he realized Blaine was there, a small pitcher was dunked in the water and poured gently over his hair and down the back of his neck.

“Oh… dear….. god…. this is amazing.”

“Here…”  Blaine pressed a couple small bottles into Kurt’s hands.  Hotel sized portions of shampoo and conditioner he must have found or traded for.

As Kurt scrubbed his hair, and ignored the layer of film that had built up on the top layer of the water caused by the filth he wasn’t able to sponge off with his daily washings, Blaine periodically poured another pot or kettle full of water into the tub, allowing the water level to rise until Kurt was submerged to his armpits.

“I’m never going to want to come out of here.”  Kurt murmured, setting his freshly cleaned mop of hair back against the crinkled tarp edge.

“You smell like cinnamon….”  

“You picked good stuff.”

“Well I’m not a total hobo.”

They laughed and Kurt squirmed back a little, “You know, you’d probably fit in my lap in here.”

“The bath’s for you Kurt.  Besides, I have to go grab something else.” Blaine said as he pulled his own coat on and slipped out the door, leaving Kurt to relax for a few solitary minutes, intending to appreciate this tub until all the water had gone cold.  

Blaine shuffled back into, teeth chattering as he complained about a strong wind outside and set down a casserole dish.  Kurt looked at it curiously, but let Blaine take off his own coat before asking.

“What’s that?”

“This… is a long overdue promise.”

The lid of the dish was removed and the dish tilted so that Kurt could see inside.

“Is… that…?”

“Cheesecake…. at least Brittany tells me it is.  I got all the ingredients she told me I needed for her to make it.”

Kurt splashed the water over the edge of the tub as he slid himself forward and towards Blaine, “Really?”

Honey eyes twinkled towards Kurt.  “Really really.”

A piece was dished up, and, as an afterthought, Blaine buffed open the lid of the peaches with a flat stone by the fire and set a few of the pieces alongside the cheesecake before handing it to Kurt.  “Enjoy.”

Kurt held the plate in his hands, just staring at the cake for a moment as he pulled his lower lips into his mouth by his top teeth.  His mind chanting over and over that he was in a hot bath and he had cheesecake in his hands.  It was surreal.

“Is… is something wrong with it?”

Kurt shook his head slowly, “No.  No.  Everything is perfect.”  He looked up, “Thank you.”

Those honey eyes said ‘You’re Welcome’ well before Blaine vocalized it and Kurt settled back in his tub and gingerly slid his fork through the cheesecake and lifted a piece to his mouth while Blaine watched with baited breath for his reaction once the piece made it’s way into Kurt’s mouth.

“Ooo…”  Kurt moaned, licking off his lips for any bits that might have caught on them, “.... I can die happy now.”

Blaine clapped his hands together and laughed in victory before taking a bite of his own piece.  More moans of appreciation were exchanged and both of them took their time in eating the treat that Kurt knew he likely wouldn’t get again for a long time, if ever.

When he had finished off his piece, and made sure the plate was clean of crumbs, he set the plate on the edge of the little tub and sat back again in the water.  “So… hot tub… cheesecake… what’s next?  You going to bring my father back from the dead?”

It sounded funnier in his head.

Blaine frowned and shook his head, kneeling down by the tub, “No.  But I was kind of hoping you’d stay the night…”

Kurt’s heart sped up and he glanced to the bed.  He had been so good at avoiding staying longer than necessary there.  He didn’t want to get attached.  He couldn’t.

It was the last night he would ever see Blaine.

“Alright.”

He half expected Blaine to clap and do another little victory cheer, but all that he got was a happy smile as Blaine took the empty plates and set them to the side.  More water was poured into the tub to keep the temperature warm and Kurt let himself enjoy it.  Even when he took over this cabin, he knew he wouldn’t be able to justify using up this much water on…

His head shot up, “How’d you get all this water?!”

Blaine looked over, nonplussed, “I’ve been saving it.”

“Saving it?”

Blaine nodded, “Since I got the idea a couple months ago….”

“From your own…?”

Blaine nodded once more.

Kurt groaned and relaxed back again, looking up at the ceiling, “You shouldn’t have wasted all that water on me… you need that to survive…”

“I’m fine.”  Blaine insisted.  “I’ve gotten by on less daily for years than what you ration here.  Besides… I wanted to make you happy.”

You have.

But Kurt doesn’t say that.  He stays quiet and simmers in the tub until he’s beyond wrinkled and he’s sure the bath has gotten rid of dirt that has been embedded in him for years.  When he climbs out, Blaine is ready with a big fluffy towel that he’s pulled out from one of his bags.

The night has just been full of too good to be true surprises.  The towel is the latest icing on the cake.  No one just had big fluffy towels anymore, certainly not ones that don’t have that crunchy dried out feeling from air drying.

“Where’d you get this?” Kurt asked as he wound the towel around himself, sighing happily with the feel of soft cotton against his clean skin.

“On one of our runs.  It was all I could fit in my bag.”

“And you saved it until now?!”  Kurt gently rubbed the towel against him, marvelling at how well a nice towel actually picked up the beads of water on his skin.  

“I honestly didn’t know what I was saving it for until I saw you come out of the water just now.” Blaine admitted sheepishly.

“You’re a marvel Blaine.” Kurt admitted then, sitting back on the mattress and pulling the towel up to rub through his hair.  He knew Blaine’s eyes would be wandering down to his now naked lower half, but he’s been naked in front of Blaine so many times before this point that he didn’t care, and, in fact, he was kind of betting on it.

“I’m afraid to touch you now that you’re so clean….”

Kurt smirks coyly, letting the towel fall behind him as he glances over at Blaine, now sitting aside him on the bed, with a hand hovering over Kurt’s naked thigh.  Kurt was right, Blaine’s eyes are locked on his crotch and the sight of a man so clearly interested in him makes his cock bob a little as it becomes interested in turn.

“Then let me.”

Kurt moves fluidly toward Blaine, his body leaning into the other man’s.  His hands grab each side of Blaine’s coat and push it back, off of Blaine and onto the floor.  Below them, Blaine is kicking off his boots with urgency, making clunking sounds against the floor as he does it, and then uses his toes to peel off his socks.  

By the time Blaine’s feet are naked, Kurt has attached their lips.  He hasn’t really explored Blaine’s mouth in all their time together, remembering how he used to watch and worship Pretty Woman as a child and internalizing that kissing is somehow more important than sex, but Blaine is leaving tomorrow and Kurt doesn’t want to regret not taking the time to savour those pink lips as much as he can.

So he does.

It seems to surprise Blaine just a little, how forward Kurt is being, as he submits to being used for his lips while Kurt’s hands continue to undress him, button by button, clasp by clasp, sleeves off, pant legs off, until Blaine is just as naked as he is and still avoiding putting his hands on Kurt’s skin and instead ghosting them over his arms and down his back but never really touching him.

So Kurt reaches back and forces one of Blaine’s hands to his waist, and the other one settles down symmetrically on the other side.  

All this time though, Kurt is letting his lips become swollen and plush as he continues grazing them against Blaine’s as he tries to perfect this skill he’ll probably never use again.

Now free to touch Kurt, Blaine’s hands slide down on either side of him and cup his cheeks, gently massaging them with calloused, rough fingers.  He starts to whisper between pecks, “Do you want -” but is silenced by Kurt pressing down hard until they both need air and the only thing they can do when they separate is make little gasps for breath.

“Just… please Blaine.  Don’t talk tonight… not anymore.  Just be with me.” Kurt utters quietly, not quite looking at Blaine when he says it and then drops his head to Blaine’s neck where he intends to leave a hickey so that Blaine will know that Kurt was his alone at least for a few days after they part.  In response all Blaine can do is moan deliciously and drop his head back to the pillow, his erection below Kurt rutting weakly upwards against Kurt’s stomach as it seeks out the friction it needs.

Kurt takes his time.  They have all night after all, pressing kisses into Blaine’s skin wherever it looks untouched.  He leaves a trail of dark purpled skin where his lips hung on just that little bit too long, and as he lifts his head to look at his handiwork, he can’t help but grin.  Blaine is a sight to behold on his own - beautiful and exotic, all olive with small curls of hair that are never out of place, and now he’s been marked by Kurt, like he belongs to him.

Kurt doesn’t stay lingering above Blaine for long though - the call of that beautiful cock too much to ignore.  He drops his head down over his and purposely moans as his mouth engulfs it, knowing now what that vibration feels like.  His moan is echoed in Blaine, whose hips struggle to stay in place and not just jerk upwards to drown himself in Kurt’s throat.  

Like his body, Kurt takes it slowly, lavishing Blaine with his tongue and letting it coil around his cock as he bobs his head up and down, sometimes lifting his head off completely so he can just worship the erection solely with his tongue and nothing more.

Blaine’s carnal instincts come out after several minutes of this and with a growl he leans down and cups Kurt under his armpits, pulling him up atop him.  In truth, Kurt lets this happen because he could fight it if he wanted to.  He doesn’t want to though.  He likes it when Blaine takes some control and makes him feel like something to be desired.  He’d never admit it, but Kurt loves it when Blaine is a little rough with him despite how things began between them.

He’s rolled over so Kurt is now below Blaine and Blaine wrenches back so quickly that Kurt just hopes he doesn’t give himself whiplash.  He can’t think of anything more though soon after that because it’s Blaine now going down on him and his mind seems to get completely fuzzy when that happens so he just embraces the trillings of pleasure coursing up and down his body as Blaine continues the bath he just had but only using his tongue on Kurt’s cock.

When he hears Blaine unpop the cap off a bottle of lube, his legs spread apart automatically.  A finger glides in and rolls itself in and out of Kurt, bumping back against the nub within him that takes his fuzzy feelings and spreads them down from just his head and all over his body.  Blaine knows him too well by this point and knows exactly how to make him weak.  He can have this done in a matter of minutes if he wanted to, but given how slowly Blaine is working him open, he has the sense that Blaine wants to take his time just as much as Kurt does.

A second finger is added eventually, and fingers stretch and scissor Kurt apart.  Just knowing that it’ll be Blaine in there soon makes Kurt moan loudly enough that Pudding starts howling from outside.  If they had been in the throes of a quickie, it might make them both break into laughter, but for now they both ignore it.  

There’s a third finger then and the scissoring goes three ways.  By this point Kurt is writhing below Blaine and uttering complete nonsense.  Three fingers and a mouth on your cock is a lot to handle, especially when they all seem to work so expertly.

Kurt hears Blaine murmur as small “Shh…” before he even fully realizes that Blaine has lifted his head off his cock.  He looks down over the span of his body with slitted eyes towards Blaine, coating himself in lubricant and working it up and down the length of his shaft.  He’s breathing heavily and slowly, and as the fingers of one hand are pulled out of Kurt, they’re replaces with the fingers of Blaine’s other hand which guides his cock to Kurt’s ready pucker.

When Blaine does push into him, it’s a slow stretch.  Blaine has never pushed into him as hard and as fast as he did that first night, always allowing Kurt’s body to adjust to the fact that he’s definitely longer and wider than the three fingers he uses to prep Kurt so it always feels good.  There’s nothing awful or painful about it by the time he’s all the way inside of Kurt, just… bliss.

Tonight, instead of clenching his eyes shut and riding out his orgasm, Kurt forces his eyes open as he watches Blaine thrust back and forth into him.  He keeps his hands on Blaine’s shoulders and guides him down periodically for sweet kisses.  Both of their foreheads brim with sweat from holding back and Kurt knows he can’t stop what’s coming as much as he wants to.  He can’t delay it anymore.

With one particularly well placed thrust against his prostate, Kurt gasps and cries out.  Still he keeps his eyes locked open, connecting his eyes with Blaine’s as he comes, committing this feeling and moment to memory.  

He’ll need it on those long, lonely nights.

Blaine comes as Kurt does, holding himself steady inside of Kurt as he orgasms with a throaty groan.  When he collapses atop Kurt, he connects their lips once again, and both of them kiss lazily until they’re both boneless and the fact that they’re a mess comes into focus.

Clean-up is quiet.  Blaine pours the last of the water into the tub and they both stand up in it, using rags to wash off their bodies and use the last little bit of hotel soap to scrub themselves clean - Blaine in particular who got the majority of Kurt’s mess stuck in his chest hair.  The towel is used to dry them both up and, taking Blaine’s outstretched hand, Kurt is led back into the bed where Blaine pulls a blanket up over them both.

Sleep comes easily.

At some point in the middle of the night, Kurt does wake.  He is shocked to discover that sleeping with Blaine isn’t as terrible as he once thought.  He’s warm and snug and feels utterly and completely safe with both of Blaine’s arms wrapped around him.  The little hairs that brush against Kurt’s chest from Blaine’s chest don’t irritate him at all anymore and the little snores that Blaine makes are rhythmic and soothing.

Kurt takes some time in the light of the moon to look over Blaine’s face as he sleeps.  So peaceful with lashes that fanned out over his cheeks.  Every now and then his lips would quiver and he’d murmur something incomprehensible from his dreams.  At one point Kurt couldn’t help but smile as something in Blaine’s dreams made his nose wrinkle up and he murmured, “... boots…” with nothing else to suggest what it was that Blaine was seeing in his slumber.

That’s when it hit Kurt.

This is exactly where he was supposed to be.  He had been putting off spending the night with Blaine because he somehow knew that this would make it real, make him realize just how much he needed this other man.  How on earth could he go back to living like he had before now that he had experienced this?

He needed to tell Blaine.  To just say one word to him, a question.  That one word could mean the change for Kurt that he needed.  He didn’t want to be alone anymore.  He didn’t want to hide.  He wanted this, everyday, forever.  

Resolutely, Kurt laid back down, winding his arms around Blaine just as Blaine had down in his sleep with him.  In the morning, Kurt told himself, in the morning I’ll ask.  In the morning I’ll know.

He’s nervous about sleeping then, worried that he’ll forget his middle-of-the-night plans or that Blaine will say no, but eventually he does drift off, his face buried in Blaine’s chest as he breathes in the other man’s soothing musk.  Calmed into a world with no nightmares of Other’s ripping him apart and telling him he’s nothing.  Instead, there’s just peace.

  
_**(Created by Marie of freakingpotter.tumblr.com)** _

He is vaguely aware of a kiss being pressed to his cheek after that, but is still so tired that nothing else registers, until, that is, he stretches a hand out across the bed and a flashing alarm in his head goes off that tells him he’s stretching it out over JUST bed and not Blaine.

That’s when Kurt bolts up and looks around, hoping that Blaine was just up to piss or start packing up.  But no, everything is gone.  All his bags and bins are gone.  There’s nothing.  He’s alone and Kurt slept through the whole process like a fool.

The towel is still there though, and Kurt wraps it up around himself as he pushes through the doorway, wincing only for a moment as the glare from the sun overhead hits him in his eyes.  There’s no sign of Blaine out there either, and it’s mid-morning.

Kurt slept through him leaving.

He collapsed to his knees right there, gasping for air he didn’t know he was short on and holding the towel tightly.  Pudding, making her morning appearance, comes over and sits by Kurt, cocking her head to the side as she regards this silly human just sitting on the ground for no apparent reason.

“I wanted to ask him…” Kurt sputters, talking to the dog as he remembers his choice from last night.

“I wanted to tell him….”

“Stay.”

  
  



	16. Chapter 15: The Idiots

**_“We cannot see our reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.” -Taoist Proverb_ **

Kurt didn’t go to town to get breakfast, nor did he go to his own cabin to eat from the rations he kept in there. Once he managed to pick himself off and out of the dirt, he returned to Blaine’s cabin and curled up on the bed there, Pudding following him and covering his feet with her warm, soft belly. He didn’t worry about hunting, or that he was supposed to be on patrol in the afternoon. He could try to distract himself with all those petty activities, but he knew it would be futile. He had let Blaine leave. Blind to his own idiocy, there had been so many times he could have told Blaine to stay. He could have even woken him up during the night once he realized it was what he wanted, but instead he had stayed quiet and now Blaine was gone and he was left behind with a dog and memories that he knew weren’t going to be enough to suffice.

Growling stomach ignored, he laid there, watching the shadows grow and then shrink on the floor as the sun shot through the cracks in the wall until he couldn’t hold his bladder any longer and forced himself up and out, retreating into the forest behind his own cabin where he had a hole dug to relieve himself into. Once that was over with, he opted to crawl into his own bed since it was so much closer and didn’t smell so much of Blaine. That smell made it hard to fight off the tears forming in his eyes.

But his bed wasn’t free for him to just fall into. On it was a pile of phones and music players, along with a charger and an envelope. Blaine had left them for Kurt. All but one.

He sat on the edge of the bed and let his fingers slide over the screens one by one, avoiding the envelope for the moment. There was one phone that he didn’t recognize and that was the one he took in his hand and pressed the buttons on. It had one file on it, titled ‘For Kurt’.

He pressed play, sucking in a sharp breath as he immediately recognized that sweet, soothing voice.

_“Well… this is more awkward than I thought it was going to be and I’m just going to record this and not play it back because that’s what I’ve done with the last few and I ended up deleting them because I just ended up sounding like a total dork… so here goes…_

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night_

_Take these broken wings and learn to fly_

_All your life_

_You were only waiting for this moment to arise_

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night_

_Take these sunken eyes and learn to see_

_All your life_

_You were only waiting for this moment to be free_

_Blackbird fly, blackbird fly_

_Into the light of the dark black night_

_Blackbird fly, blackbird fly_

_Into the light of the dark black night_

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night_

_Take these broken wings and learn to fly_

_All your life_

_You were only waiting for this moment to arise_

_You were only waiting for this moment to arise_

_You were only waiting for this moment to arise._

_Oh god… I got it all right on the first go around… I hoped you liked it. I was thinking… well… actually… this is going to sound so stupid… but I was dreaming and you were in my dreams and a blackbird flew up behind you and landed on your shoulder and I was thinking that if you were a part of the Warblers that a blackbird would be totally fitting for your alias… I’m not talking about the giant fat garbage birds that happen to be black… Not sure if they’re crows or ravens… anyhow… I’m talking about the blackbirds that are more native to Europe and Africa… according to Trent… yes I talked to Trent about it…. weird I know… Anyhow, Trent says that Blackbird males sing right in the middle of winter unlike a lot of other songbirds who wait until spring and this whole time.. with you here in the winter… Oh shit… I don’t even know what I’m talking about… ignore all that. I’m babbling like an idiot because I don’t know what to say. I thought maybe if I spoke to a phone instead of you directly that I’d be more coherent and I think I’m actually less coherent.”_

There was a sigh in the recording, and Kurt forced up a smile. The recording was so absolutely Blaine that it just made his heart break just that much more.

_“I want you to know… that I enjoyed our time together… oh hell.. that sounds like one of those crappy cards my mom used to send out to relatives that visited… I mean, I did enjoy it… even when you were hard on me. I’m going to miss you… and… well… I wish winter never had to end.”_

Kurt winced. The recording stopped there but he started it over, and then played it again and again until he had all of Blaine’s words, pauses, and breathes committed to memory - and even after that he played it if only to listen to Blaine’s song to him. Why hadn’t Blaine sung when he had been there? Why was Kurt only hearing his voice now?

He set up the charger so it sat outside with the cord running under Kurt’s door with the phone plugged in inside. That way it got the solar power it needed readily and the phone was protected from the elements. He just needed to ensure he put it away when he wasn’t around.

By the time night came, the phone had died out completely and he forced himself to look at the envelope. On the outside it was plain, a white envelope tinged with yellow from age with his name scrawled across the front. He let himself focus on how Blaine added curls to the ends of all the letters he wrote and looped the crosses of the K and the T. Why hadn’t Kurt noticed how beautiful Blaine’s writing was before?

Oh right. Because he was an idiot that didn’t notice anything good until it was gone.

Kurt delayed the process further by sliding the folded piece of paper out centimeter by centimeter until the envelope fell away. It was just one piece of paper, similarly yellowed from age with the same distinctive writing that the envelope had. He took in a breath, and read:

_Dear Kurt,_

_This is the fourteenth letter to you I’ve started. Don’t bother looking for the others as I’ve thrown them to the fire. Like the phone I left you with my message on it, it seems I’m no better at expressing myself on paper than I am in person. Please don’t hold it against me if I end up being a rambling idiot in here as well as this is my last piece of paper and my last chance to write something for you._

_When I came here, I didn’t know what to expect. I was scared and fearful for myself and Trent. But I came because it was your voice that gave me hope over that transmission back in the autumn, and that continued to fill me with hope as Trent healed - even though you tried to push me away like you do with everyone else around you._

_For a long time now I’ve followed. I’ve followed orders, I’ve followed trails and roads, I’ve followed the sun as it sets. I didn’t question any of it because I thought I was living. I was wrong though. You woke something up in me, as awfully cheesy as that may sound. I’ve never been more alive, more at peace, and more at home than I have been these past months with you._

_You’re nothing like the kind of man I thought I would fall so hard for. You’re tough and straightforward and definitely not the romantic man I dreamed about when I was younger - but don’t think that’s a bad thing. Your strength makes me want to be stronger, your honesty is rare, and while you may not be romantic, you clearly care about the people around you and don’t look for any recognition for all the things you do. You just… do what needs to be done. You’re an amazing man and to top it all off, you’re gorgeous. You take my breath away every time I see you._

_I wish I knew if you felt the same, but I’ve always been afraid of asking because I know how strongly you feel about appearing independant. I didn’t want to push you away so I’m doing the coward’s thing and writing you as I leave you to let you know that if there were such a thing as a soulmate, that I believe you would have been mine. I have never been so happy as I have been in these past few months, and I want you to know, that’s because of you._

_I wish you all the best and hope you find whatever it is you need to feel complete and happy, and I’m sorry that it wasn’t me._

_I will love you forever,_

_Blaine_

Kurt stared at it until the words blurred before him and seemed to merge and stretch into fuzzy black lines. That asshole. It was the coward’s way out. He should have told Kurt! He should have….

Not that Kurt was one to talk.

Both of them were idiots. Both of them would have to live with it now. It wasn’t like he could pick up a phone and call Blaine to tell him to come back. He didn’t have an address he could send a letter to, and he didn’t even ask where Blaine was going to now - not that Blaine necessarily knew that himself.

He had let Blaine go like a fool, and only chance would let them see one another again - and then who knew how long that would take? Months? Years? Decades? Everything could change in any one of those time periods.

Kurt read the letter once more and then knelt beside his bed, counting the pelts up from the bottom. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. At ten he slipped his hand between the hides and felt around for a moment before pulling out a dull, once blue, folder.

He didn’t look at it often. In fact, he couldn’t recall the last time he had. As he flipped the folder open he caught his breath. It was only a couple of pictures. One of his mom and dad, so young in their wedding attire, smiling at the camera in unison. They had been so happy, so full of hope. His dad wore a black tux with a little red flower pinned on his breast to match the red vest and tie he wore under his jacket and his mother had a gorgeous white gown with red embroidery woven throughout. Her hair delicately piled atop her head and fastened down with a tiara that reflected the light of the camera flash.

The second photo was the three of them, right before his mother had so suddenly succumbed. It was out in the yard of their old house. Kurt has set up a lemonade and virgin pina colada stand in the front yard and the three of them were posing with it. He didn’t know who had taken the picture, and again, all faces were happy.

They were the only two photos he had on him when they made their run up north, the family picture had been in his wallet and the wedding picture had been in his dad’s wallet. Now he kept them both, as safe as he could. He didn’t know why. Neither picture brought him any consolation and it wasn’t like he’d ever have anyone to pass them down to. Once he has finished looking over them, the letter from Blaine was slipped into the folder as well and all of it was slipped back between the tenth and eleventh pelts in the pile.

He knew it would be awhile before he could bring himself to look at them again after this.

No one came to check on him throughout that day. No one cared. He could have been dead and the only person who would have been concerned had left him.

He needed to take care of himself.

So, when the sun rose the next day, Kurt forced himself to get up, wash himself, get dressed, and go out into the woods to hunt. He was sluggish, his reaction time slow, and the only reason he had anything to bring into the town at all when he was done was because he had caught several rabbits in his traps.

No one spoke to him when he dropped the rabbits off at the kitchen. No one even looked his way.

He was alone again.

Kurt had forgotten how empty it felt to not be noticed. He wasn’t living with all these other people, he was just… mutually existing. They did their thing and he did his. How long would it take to get used to that feeling again? Could he?

“Hey Kurt.”

His head snapped to the side as he walked down the street and saw Trent there, leaning on his cane on the side of the road by the library. Someone noticed him…

“Hey Trent.”

“Got a moment?”

Kurt nodded and followed after Trent who stepped with his limp inside. The library had definitely transformed from the bleak, dark, and dusty room with piles of unsorted books it had been months ago. Now it was well shelved and signs had been put up to help patrons find and sort the books. Kitty had potted some plants in the windows and entrance to brighten things up, and there was even a kids reading area with smaller chairs and tables. Trent had done a remarkable job.

“Blaine left yesterday…”

“Yes.” Kurt said, trying to hold back any evidence of emotion.

“How are you doing?”

Kurt looked away and down to the floor, “I’m fine.”

“Liar.”

Kurt couldn’t possibly respond to that. It was true, but acknowledging it meant acknowledging so much else he was trying to keep buried inside him at the moment and he didn’t want it to come up. Not in front of Trent. Not in town.

Trent didn’t wait for a response though. He just kept talking.

“Look. I don’t know you well enough really to know how much you cared about Blaine, but any idiot could see that you did care to some extent. You would peek through books under the pretense of making shelves while he was reading stories to the kids, when you’d walk through town your eyes were always searching for him - and I know that because they’d stop searching when they landed on him. I’d even see the occasional smile on your face when you thought no one was looking and you were listening to him talk.”

“So what?” Kurt huffed, sitting himself down on an overturned crate that was being used as a seat in the library. “You’re going to tell me to chase him down, tell him my feelings, and hope he reciprocates them? Kind of pointless now.”

“You’re right.” Trent replied, looking back to Kurt with what could only be pity on his face, “You two idiots should have said more to each other awhile ago but you’re too uptight and he’s too cowardly and now you’re both alone.”

“Why’re you telling me this Trent?”

“Because he told me to look out after you, even though you’ve been doing it on your own well before we came to town. More than that though… Kitty is pregnant.”

Kurt rolled his eyes. Every woman was pregnant right around now - the Valentine’s dance had only been weeks ago after all. All that fornicating had to lead to something. “And?”

“And I convinced Kitty that you should be the baby’s godfather.”

Kurt snickered a little, “I hate to break it to you Trent, as honoured as I am that you came to me, delivered this wonderful little lecture about how Blaine and I are fools, and then told me you want me to take care of your kid in case something happens to the both of you - this isn’t exactly a Catholic settlement.”

“Doesn’t matter… I grew up Catholic and I want there to be someone willing and ready in case something happens to the both of us, someone we’ve acknowledged as being the back-up caretaker of the baby to the whole town.”

Kurt, despite his better judgement, nodded once, “Fine. You’re not just asking me though because you’ve heard I’ve got a magic touch with babies though right?”

Trent laughed softly, “No… that’s just an added bonus.”

“You must have missed this part… but why me then?”

Trent leaned back against the wall, his leg could only take standing for so long even now, “Well… if Blaine had stayed, it would have easily been him… but I’ve seen you with Beth…. what you lack in interacting with adults, you make up for interacting with kids. You’re good with them… and you care, just like you cared for Blaine. Even if you’re trying to hide it, it’s always there. You make sure the people around here are fed and protected, even when they don’t seem to care that you do it… and you get up even when the days seem pointless…. Like today.”

Kurt nodded, “Like today.”

“You’re welcome over at our home anytime you like by the way Kurt… I owe you a lot and it appears I’m short a good friend now.”

Kurt chuckled, “I’m sure Kitty would just love that.”

“Kitty actually likes you. Says you’re one of the few people that can meet her level of sass and she has to respect that.”

“Really hey?”

“Wouldn’t lie when it comes to my Kitty.”

“Well I guess I could do that now and then… especially when baby is born. Thought of any names yet?”

Trent let out a small chuckle that told Kurt that yes, they had spoken and they probably weren’t on the same page when it came to names.

“I’m old school Kurt. I like plain, strong names. James and Sarah and Marcus and Mary….”

“And she likes?”

“Weird names!” Trent’s free hand suddenly became animated as he expounded, gesturing all over, “Frances, Stella, Maddox, and Lucille….”

Kurt couldn’t hold back the laugh that erupted, though he tried with one hand to cover his mouth to hold it back until he could speak again. “Those are perfectly legitimate names Trent… they’re not weird.”

“But they’re not traditional!”

“To whom Trent?” Kurt looked up to meet Trent’s gaze, “We’re making new traditions these days. Last year the names of the babies born ranged from John to Jijuglo and no one batted an eye.”

Trent grimaced at the second name Kurt said, and inwardly Kurt couldn’t blame him. Everyone but the parents of that poor child just called her Ji-ji.

“What would you suggest then?”

Kurt furrowed his brow. He’d never been asked for advice on names, let alone a baby’s name. “I don’t know… I guess I’d probably name a kid after either one of my parents… Burt and Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth is nice… but Burt… eh….”

Kurt snickered, “Yeah.”

“And they named you Kurt? Honestly? Burt and Kurt?”

“Terrible right? Anyhow… yeah…. I would pick a name that has personal meaning to me I guess…”

“Good advice… think she’ll take it?”

“Not if she has her heart set on Stella.”

“Ugh.”

Kurt and Trent talked for awhile longer, about the weather, the library, about the baby, and everything except Blaine. They had already spoken too much about Blaine for Kurt’s heart to take. Little by little he’d have to deal with Blaine’s departure until he could handle thinking about him more than a few moments at a time. Eventually they went their separate ways and Kurt went to collect his dinner, ignoring when Sam tried to wave him over to the table he was at in favour of taking his meal home where Pudding was waiting with a wag of her tail.

“Hey girl.” He said softly, tossing her a piece of stew soaked bread which she rapidly snapped up without chewing. At least he had someone to come home to at least - though Kurt figured that Pudding’s loyalty was more dependant on his willingness to share his his food rather than true love.

The phone had charged throughout the day and once Kurt had finished eating his meal, he laid back in bed with the phone sitting on his chest, looping Blaine’s song and message over and over again. Kurt wanted to go to sleep listening to that silken voice, even if it meant he would fall asleep with a heavy heart.

But he didn’t fall asleep because after the fifth repeat of Blaine’s message, Pudding lifted her head up and looked at the door with perked ears. Kurt’s eyes flitted over to her, to see if she had caught scent of something or someone, but what Pudding had picked up became apparent to Kurt quickly.

Yelling. Screaming. Something that sounded like the sky was being torn apart. Quads… lots of quads.

Kurt bolted out of his bed and jumped into his boots, grabbing his bow and arrow pack in one fluid motion and running out the door with Pudding on his heels. The screaming and the motors of the ATV engines got louder as he ran towards the town… which was lit up in flames.

He ran in as children, the old, the sick all ran out, around him. Some were crying, some where trying to calm those with them, while others looked back in shock as they ran, eyes all wide and distressed. Pudding ran away from Kurt there, helping to herd the humans to safety.

Kurt didn’t stop to ask anyone what was wrong. They were afraid - that much was clear. He’d figure things out once he got to the source of the engine noise.

Though that noise made his heart leap and plummet at the same time. Quads… if it was the Warblers, it meant they had come back, which meant they knew where the town was, which meant…

No. He couldn’t let his personal feelings get in the way of what he was running into. He needed to be ready for anything.

The fire was spreading out from the opposite end of town along the edges of the buildings and jumping from rooftop to rooftop. He could see quads racing up and down the main street, kicking up dirt in their paths. Another pair of quads was encircling one part of the road and making a storm of dust between them where Kurt could vaguely see the silhouette of someone trapped inside their paths.

Across the road, Noah was engaged in a fight with one of the Warblers… a member Kurt remembered seeing in the fall but never heard speak during their brief encounter. A quad lay on its side nearby, suggesting that the Warbler had fallen or been pulled off by Noah and now they were throwing punches back and forth, neither one of them seeming to have the upper hand.

Kurt heard the whiz of a arrow fly nearby and looked up to find Quinn, on one of the balconies of the old brothel, trying to hit the tires of the quads in motion. Below where she was, Santana was directing elderly community members out of the building and between the alleyway to escape, Azimio watching her back.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Kurt’s head snapped the other way, spotting Trent standing at the edge of the street and yelling at his former comrades.

“Laying a claim!”

One of the quads stopped short in front of Trent, forcing him to take a step back or be hit. Kurt recognized the man on that machine painted with a red cardinal… Sebastian.

“You can’t! This is insanity! People and families live here!” Trent spit back, looking at his former friend in shock.

“And now we do. You get the choice though. Are you still a Warbler?” Sebastian said, offering Trent a hand which the other man pulled away from.

“I have a wife now… a baby on the way… and you’re threatening the only safe place for our family to be together because you think you deserve it more? Fuck you Sebastian!”

The man on the quad’s eyes shrunk from forgiving to vengeful, and he kicked out a leg, hitting Trent’s cane out from under him and making him stumble without the support he needed to stay upright. “They you can run or you can die.”

“You’re mad…”

Kurt had had enough by this point and launched the arrow he had readied. It sailed smoothly into one of the front tires and by the time Sebastian had looked up to realize what had happened, Kurt had sent a second arrow into the other tire on that side.

“Hey Robin Hood. Someone should have told you that it’s the 21st century now and we use guns.” Sebastian pulled a pistol out of his belt and aimed.

But Kurt wasn’t worried, because at that moment Karofsky ran out from the side of the building where Kurt had seen him creeping forward earlier and launched himself at Sebastian, taking him completely by surprise as the much bigger man forced him off the quad under his weight and made him lose hold of the gun which fell to the ground by Trent who hastily reached down to grab it.

With Sebastian down, Kurt turned to help Quinn stop the other troublemakers and between the both of them, they downed the quads one by one while the guards fought them and brought them each down. The Warblers had been prepared to put up a fight, but they obviously hadn’t been prepared to deal with a small army that had been vigilant for years, all trained to use different weapons.

And they definitely weren’t prepared to meet that army that would go to any lengths to protect what they had put so much time and effort into creating - their community.

By the time the dust had literally settled, the Warblers were all tied up and guarded. There were ten of them, which mean that some were still unaccounted for - including Blaine. Workers were running mad trying to put out the fires with blankets and buckets of whatever water they could find while the core group of guards tried to figure out what to do with their prisoners.

“They need to be locked up.”  
“Where? For how long?”   
“We should just kill them.”   
“How?”  
“That’s not right.”  
“They would have killed us!”  
“They may of well have… look at my house! It’s gone!”  
“We could punish them…”  
“And then what? We can’t keep them locked up forever.”  
“That’s why we should just kill them.”  
“Are you going to be the one to do it because I couldn’t bring myself to it.”  
“What about making them slave labour and fix up the mess they made?”  
“That might work…”  
“Until they spot a chance to get free and finish what they started…”  
“And how would we even enforce it?”

Kurt only half listened in, his eyes darting around, trying to see if he could see Blaine somewhere…. maybe he was hiding… maybe he was preparing an attack with the rest of the group…

That’s when he caught Sebastian staring at him.

“Wondering where our little Canary is?”

Kurt’s eyebrows flattened as his eyes narrowed. Before he could even speak though, Trent spoke up from where he had been standing off to the side. "Yeah. Where is Blaine and Nick and Jeff and Wes and -"

"They're a little bit tied up at the moment."

The double entendre was definitely purposeful, making Trent and Kurt look to one another with raised brows before looking back to Sebastian while some of the other guards began listening in, interest peaked.

"Where?" Kurt asked plainly.

"Let me go and I'll show you."

"Not fucking likely." Noah snapped. "You can't just roll in here, start shit, burn down our homes and expect us to comply with your demands in exchange for some of your accomplises."

"Oh no." Sebastian looked to Noah. "You won't. They..." He looked back to Trent and Kurt, ".. However...will."

The guy thought he knew him, Kurt thought to himself. Yes, he'd do most anything to ensure Blaine was safe, but he wouldn't do anything that put everyone else at risk, even if it meant he has to scour the countryside for weeks to find out where Sebastian had Blaine.

Trent hesitated, everyone looking to him, but he was confident too. "No. I love those guys but I have a family I need to look out for now and if there's anything I've learned about you over the years Sebastian, it's that I can't trust you."

Sebastian's lips curled up at that, clearly not expecting be rejected so quickly and overestimating the collateral he had invested in the missing Warblers.

"Put them in the old sheriffs office until we figure out what to do with them." Kurt ordered, and several of the guards complied, pushing and prodding the bound Warblers to where they at least had a couple jail cells which, up until that point, had only ever been used for storage. They'd have to figure out how to lock them up without a key, but at least they could be more easily guarded in a confined space.

Sebastian glared at him when he was pushed past.

Once they were out of sight and earshot, Trent look to Kurt, "I honestly didn't know aching about this I swear!"

The thought hadn't even crossed Kurt's mind but it must have for several others because Santana was up in Trent's face right away, "How the hell can we prove that?!"

"He gave up knowing about the rest of his friends in order to protect Kitty Santana. I think it's pretty clear his loyalty is with us now." Kurt interrupted, shooting a glare at her.

"Oh, and we should trust you on that? It's not like you weren't heavily involved with Blaine while he was here."

Kurt and Santana continued to exchange death stares until Quinn imposed her own opinion.

"Kurt has never done wrong by us Santana. It's been the other way in fact... He wouldn't sell us out to find his boyfriend."

A flush rose in Kurt's cheeks. How did Quinn know? A quick glance around to check for reactions in the small gathering only to find a complete lack of surprise in their faces. They knew he and Blaine had been together even though he had tried to hide it. Was he that transparent? Did someone share their secret?

Or was it really as obvious as Trent had said it was earlier?

"Do you think they're actually bound up somewhere or did that guy say that to throw us off? They could be ready to plan a second attack...." Noah asked, effectively shutting down the topic of Kurt and Trent being traitorous.

Trent shook his head, "There's always been a division in the Warblers.... Sebastian... Hunter... All those guys that we caught... They've always thought we should be more aggressive... But the rest of us didn't want to upset anyone else's living situation which is why we never joined any other communities on our travels. Adding two guys to your huge community caused enough of a stir. The smaller communities we've been to would have outright refused twenty guys joining them - except for renegade groups, which most of us have always been against. That's just suicidal."

"Well how did they know our location then?" Santana snapped.

"I think I can answer that." Karofsky's voice interrupted as he walked towards them, returning from the sheriffs office and holding out some kind of device in his hands and then offering it to Kurt.

Everyone watched as Kurt turned it over in his hands and pressed what looked like a button, making the screen light up and a digital map enter his sight. "What the...."

Trent peered over and shook his head, "A renegade group gave that to us about a year ago. Said if we could get it working it would show us current maps because the satellites up there apparently still work and that thing was linked to it somehow."

"We'll it looks like they got it to work..." Kurt mused as he drew a finger over the screen, watching as the map zoomed in and displayed, much too clearly, their town, including a red hue overtop of it which Kurt could only assume indicated activity somehow. He knew how to fix cars, not deal with technology of this level.

"It shows us?!" Noah wakes over and looked. "Damn..."

"They must have used it to find our location once they got close enough..." Trent offered.

"Why would a renegade group gift your something like that?" Quinn asked, also asked as she maneuvered over to take a look as well.

"I don't know. I wasn't in on that discussion." Trent shrugged.

"Maybe we could find Blaine and the others with this...." Kurt said softly, dragging his finger around to see if he could figure out how to use it. God he hoped he could.

"We need to get things in order and calmed down here first." Santana asserted. "Then we'll look for them."

Her statement and eyes were directed to Kurt, who just nodded in compliance. As much as he just wanted to grab a horse and rush out to find Blaine, make sure he was okay, he also needed to make sure things were taken care of in town and needed some time to figure out the device in his hands before he tried to use it to find Blaine.

As if he were reading his mind, Trent hobbled up beside Kurt and held out a hand, “I can work on figuring that out while you help out around here since I’m not as able to move around as fluidly as you…”

Kurt nodded and handed it over, ignoring the questioning look Santana was giving him. Despite what she thought, Kurt did trust Trent. He had to trust someone around here after all. If Trent was going to trust Kurt with his unborn child as a godfather, than Kurt didn’t see any reason not to reciprocate that trust.

The next several hours was chaos. The fires were put out and the damage was assessed. People were moved around in the surviving, safe homes. Some apartments had beds lined up in rows because they needed to get as many people in as they could. Mercedes drafted up a new work plan where half the workers would be dedicated to building new homes. It was generally agreed upon that everyone would be putting in a lot more hours and time to make it all work.

Among the guards, a new schedule was also drafted up by Santana where there would be three people on shifts at all times to watch the Warblers, who were also packed into the little cells tight. Guards would have to double shift - one shift for helping the work and one for protecting the town until they knew what was going on with the other Warblers.

Then there was the water issue.

Once the fires were out, it was solemnly announced that most of the water they had stockpiled from the winter snow had been used up. Rations would have to be reduced and there would be an effort to take the big barrels out to old drainage ditches to try and increase their stock.

A lot of crying happened too. To an extent, Kurt got it. People had worked hard to make this new home after losing their last one, and now a new invasion had reduced many of their homes to ash. Children were devastated. This was their first real encounter with another big group and it left them with fear. How could they ever feel safe again?

Kurt spent most of his time running around where people needed support. He helped knock down some burnt pillars, brought the elderly and infirmed their meals, swept dust out of homes that hadn’t been on fire but had gotten covered in the ashes of other homes, and made beds for children who needed to sleep but their parents were still busily working. By the time he got back to Trent, it was the middle of the night and he was covered in soot, sweat, and exhausted.

“I think I’ve got it Kurt….” Trent didn’t need to be woken up. He had stayed in the library where several beds had been set up and children were sleeping under his supervision. “... let me show you.”

It was relatively easy to use once Trent showed Kurt a few times. The range was limited though so they could only check so far away.

“Best bet is if we go towards the meeting place because I’ll wager anything they’re somewhere between here and there.” Trent noted.

Kurt nodded. It made sense. Admittedly he was worried. He didn’t know if they had food or water wherever they were. If they were bound up such that they could be in danger if wild animals passed by, or if Sebastian and his goons had hurt them and they needed medical attention. Mike had been attending to the main transmitter while checking people for smoke inhalation, just in case they were able to send out a message, but so far no luck.

“You should take a nap… get some rest… I don’t imagine many other people will join you and I on this quest, and I’m kind of feeble so it would be good if you were at your best.” Trent stated after the pair of them decided to go out in the morning light.

Kurt sighed and nodded, “Yeah… just… “

“It’ll be hard to sleep when you’re worried about him… I get it.”

Kurt looked down between his feet. That was exactly it.

“Well.. try… and wash up. You shouldn’t go to him looking like hell.”

Kurt chuckled and gave Trent a quick nod as he exited, making his way out of town through the throngs of people still busily working and feeling guilty about leaving them behind while he had a nap.

Everyone else had cleanup well underway though, and he needed to find Blaine. He had gotten his second chance and he wasn’t going to screw it up, even though it had come at a high price.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	17. Chapter 16: The Sacrifice

_** “Without water, a man dies. A man’s body makes water. His blood is water. A child is born in a rush of water. Water keeps us clean. It keeps us healthy. It keeps us alive.  It is when we are in water that we are closest to God. But… when a man stays took long in water, he dies..  When you touch water, you touch the Essence of God.” - Kristine Kathryn Rusch, The Fey: The Sacrifice ** _

No amount of scrubbing seemed to get the dark soot completely out of Kurt’s skin, much less his clothing which would have to be identified as black henceforth.  He did try using up the last of the shampoo that Blaine had gotten for him and that had helped his hair, but the rest of him was a write off.

And he didn’t have time to make himself pretty.

After napping for three hours and washing himself down, Kurt returned to down, thinking he’d be able to get a couple horses for himself and Trent and begin their mission to find Blaine and the other Warblers.  Kurt wasn’t expecting a full brigade though.

Gathered in front of the library, with Trent, was Sam and Mike, along with a wagon that had already been hitched up to some horses.  The wagon had a couple water barrels sitting in the back and Mercedes was giving orders to a couple workers who stood nearby while Sam watched her lovingly.

“What’s all this?” Kurt asked of Trent when he reached them.

“If some of them are hurt you’ll need me…”  Mike said, and Kurt saw then that his medical bag was also sitting in the back of the wagon.

“And Blaine is my buddy too man.  You’re not going to do this alone.” Sam added.  “Mercedes just said we need to collect any water if we pass by any drainage ditches or ponds.  Kill two birds with one stone.”

Kurt smiled and nodded.  It would be better to have them.  If any of the Warblers were hurt, then they’d have the wagon to transport them easier… and Trent would do better riding in the wagon than on a horse anyhow.  

“I’ve got the positioning device ready to go Kurt.  It doesn’t have a lot of power left so I suggest we only turn it on every hour or so.” Trent noted as he climbed up the wagon with Sam’s help.

“Sounds like a plan.” Kurt agreed and thanked Mercedes as she brought him a saddled horse, noting it was the “fastest one they had” in the process.   The two workers also climbed up into the wagon, probably to help with any water collection they might have to do.  Goodbye’s were said and then the pack of them were off, Kurt well in the lead as he mapped out the path to the place he had met Blaine in the fall.  He needed to get to him, and every minute that passed by made that need stronger.

For the first six hours though, there was nothing.  No water to collect, no Warblers to be found, and no calm in Kurt’s chest.  He was about to ask Mike for something to calm his anxiety when they turned on the device in the seventh hour and picked up a red halo of activity ahead of them.  It wasn’t close yet, but it was more than they had up until that point.

“If my scale calculations are right.. that’s about another couple hours out… close to where you guys found us last year…”  Trent noted to Kurt who was already grabbing some coffee beans out of a bag in the back of the wagon and racing to get back to his horse and ride out.  That had to be them.

As fast as the horse was, it wasn’t fast enough for Kurt.  He needed to turn those hours into seconds, but it wasn’t happening and it wasn’t until Trent’s predicted two hours that Kurt and Sam, racing their stallions ahead of the group, reached an old farm where the red blur on the device indicated the activity was coming from.

“The silo.  There!”  Sam pointed out to Kurt ahead of them.  Beside the tall, cylindrical metal structure was parked a few quads.  Kurt turned his horse and had it run to the structure, nearly jumping off as he reached it.

“Hello?!”

Banging.  Banging and yelling from inside the silo started as soon as he reached it.  He ran around the base of it, looking for an access point.  There was one, but it had been bolted shut.  Shit.  

“It’s Kurt!  From the community!  Is Blaine in there?!”

He heard some noises from within, a barrage of voices, several of which said “Yes” - though it was muffled. 

“I’m going to figure out how to get you guys out.  It’s bolted so give me a few minutes to figure it out.” Kurt yelled towards the structure.

There was more muted conversation and movement from inside while Sam, Kurt, and the others tried to figure out how to deal with the locked entryway.  It was Kurt, in his haste, that came up with the only thing they could do without bolt cutters or some kind of welding torch.

He grabbed an oversized, rusty metal shovel that was leaning against the silo, pulling it away from the growth that had been building up around it for years, and wedged it between the silo and the little access door, pushing with all his might in an effort to break apart the chains, even though they were in much better shape than any of the other metal around.

It wasn’t the chains that broke though.  It was the access door.  The rust and age had caught up with the hinges on it and they broke apart, making the door snap back towards Kurt and then dangle from the chains still holding it onto the silo as a cheer went up from both outside and inside the silo.

Kurt didn’t have time to celebrate.

He stuck his head into the dark, damp, and urine scented structure.  “Blaine?”

“He’s here!”  A voice rang out and as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw a pair of faces, which he recognized from the autumn as those that initially greeted him, pulling up a limp and unconscious Blaine from the ground and carrying him towards the exit Kurt had made.  

“Oh…. Mike!”  Kurt snapped his head back to yell for the medic who was already coming up with his medical bag.  

Sam and Kurt took over carrying Blaine as he was lifted through the entrance and then brought to Mike.  Kurt watched with trepidation as Mike checked him over and found the source of the problem - a large bump on his head.

“He fought with Sebastian and Sebastian hit him across the back of the head when Blaine thought he had backed down… we think he has a concussion or something.”  One of the Warblers said as they started flooding out of the silo, stinking of dirt and piss.

Kurt knelt on the side of Blaine opposite to where Mike was checking him over.  “What can I do Mike?”

Mike didn’t respond to him though, instead looking up at the nearby Warbler who had given him the other information, “Has he been awake at all?”

The man nodded.  “In and out.  Complaining of a massive headache whenever he has been awake and just making things worse by attacking the silo from the inside to try and get out and get to ….”  he looked at Kurt “... you I guess.  Wears himself out and collapses again.”

Kurt took a small, shuddering breath and reached for Blaine’s hand while Mike mumbled to himself.  “Good.. that’s good… probably no brain damage then.  Any other injuries?”

The man shook his head, “No.  Sebastian had guns… they made us go into their when we wouldn’t go along with their plan to take over your village… did they?”

Mike shook his head, “No.  We have them all locked up.”

The man breathed out a sigh of relief, “I’m sorry… we… we tried to talk them down from it…. and Blaine… he didn’t even care about the guns…. He was so worked up about it that he ran right into them all.  Took them by surprise and then Sebastian got him and… well…”

Mike shook his head, “The Tides didn’t get rid of the morons unfortunately…”  He tipped Blaine’s head to the side and pulled a needle out of his bag, injecting it into the swollen spot.  “I’m just reducing the pressure on his skull Kurt… He should be fine.”

Kurt nodded, squeezing Blaine’s hand in his own.  God.  If Blaine didn’t make it now, after all that….

But Blaine groaned then and his eyes fluttered open, “What…?”

“Hold his head still while I finish up Kurt.”  Mike directed, Kurt’s hands flying up to hold Blaine’s head in place while Mike finished up.

“Why does it feel like there’s a needle in my head?” Blaine murmured, eyes jumping around until they landed on Kurt, “Kurt?”

Kurt offered a smile, his heart trying to smash through his chest as it grew exponentially within his chest, “Yeah… and it’s because there is a needle in your head.  Mike is trying to help you out.”

“Oh.”

Blaine just kept looking up at Kurt, apparently unphased by the fact he was being worked on by Mike.  A smile flourished over his face and those honey eyes twinkled as they scanned over Kurt’s face.  “You found me again.”

Kurt chuckled, “Yeah.  Seems like it.”

“There.”  Mike announced, pulling the needle away and quickly applying a gauze pad soaked in something that made Blaine wince and flinch.  “It’s disinfectant.  You definitely don’t want to get an infection that close to your brain.”

“I’ll hold it…”  Kurt offered and his fingers replaced Mike’s while Mike rifled through the medical bag until he came up with some wrap bandaging he started winding around Blaine’s head.

“Sebastian?” Blaine asked then.

Kurt shook his head, “We lost a few buildings to the fires he set…. but we caught them all.  They’re under guard at the community.”

Like his friend, Blaine breathed a sigh of relief and reached up to grasp Kurt’s hands in his own, “My messages?”

Kurt smiled and squeezed back Blaine’s hands, “I got them.”

“Okay Kurt, you can help him up and we’ll give him some anti-inflammatories.” Mike interrupted.  

Kurt pulled Blaine by his hands up to standing, moving in quickly when it looked like the motion was going to make the curly haired man collapse again and tucking himself under one of Blaine’s arms to support him.  “Come on.  You can sit in the wagon.”

“With you?”

“Sure.”

Kurt climbed aboard once he had Blaine safely loaded.  The other Warblers lingered around, looking lost and unsure of what to do until Sam spoke.  

“You can come with us.  Decide what to do about the other birds.”

That seemed to work for them, and they too climbed aboard the wagon, stopping only to grab things they might need from the cargo bins of the ATV’s.

“Mercedes isn’t going to be happy about me bringing back more people and no water.”  Sam grunted towards Kurt.

“Mercedes will understand.”  Kurt responded.

They set back off then, Mike now riding Kurt’s horse while Trent took over leading the wagon and speaking to his friends.  

Kurt just reveled in his second chance.

“Are you alright?” Blaine asked of him after they had been back on the trail for a few minutes and Kurt had to stop himself from arching up an eyebrow.

“You’re the one that was hurt.”

“But.. you said there were fires… and then you came out here…”

“Blaine.  I’m fine.”

“You always say that.”

“And this time, I’m being honest.”  Kurt said stiffly, reaching over to tuck a curl behind Blaine’s ear.  The bandaging covered way too much of Blaine’s head and his curls for Kurt’s liking, but to have him again, living and breathing and right in front of him, was worth not being able to just comb his fingers through that hair like he wanted to.

“I tried to stop Sebastian.”

“I heard.”  Kurt said quietly, pulling Blaine to rest against him.  It would be a bumpy ride and the least he could go was let Blaine have his soft body to help absorb the shocks.

“I should have stayed.” Blaine said then, letting himself rest against Kurt and closing his eyes which allowed Kurt to mentally map out his face once more, ensuring everything was still there from the last night they had spent together.

“Yeah.  You should have.”

“Would you have been okay with that?”

“I was going to ask you to.”  Kurt admitted, looking up at the sky above them then as a crow flew overhead, “But you left before I woke up…”

“Nothing like the last minute huh?” Blaine murmured with a yawn following it.

“Mmmhmm… You can sleep.  I’ll keep you safe.” Kurt said, winding his arms around Blaine then.  He didn’t care about the other people in the wagon or what anyone else thought.  He had his second chance.  He wasn’t going to blow it.

“Mmrrmm… okay…” 

Blaine was out not second after saying it and Kurt spent the better part of the ride home rubbing his hand up and down Blaine’s back, humming soft lullabies to him and ignoring the friendly questions from the other Warblers.  He only had interest in one person, and that person was in his arms.

When they got back into town it was the middle of the night but thanks to their radio transmissions, their friends and families were all waiting for them.  As expected, Mercedes playfully scolded Sam about the water before giving him a kiss, and Trent swept Kitty into his arms for a kiss as well before introducing her to all the Warblers who looked completely overwhelmed by the community they had found themselves in.

While they had been gone, it looked like there had been progress on the reconstruction.  A giant stack of lumber had been piled in the center of the street and a couple basic frames had been put up where the new homes were to be created. The town looked a lot less black from the ashes, even though the ground was still dark.

Mike directed Kurt to have Blaine check in the next day with him before leaving for the clinic.  While Mercedes directed her workers to show the Warblers where they would be staying and had other workers collect the horses and wagon, Kurt helped Blaine walk down the path to their homes, passing by Blaine’s cabin in favour of his own, which he knew would have blankets ready at least.

“Pudding!”  Blaine cooed as the dog ran up and tried to jump on them both before Kurt held a protective arm out.

“Down!”

She complied, but follow the men in, tail wagging loudly as Kurt helped Blaine lie back in the bed and then set about not only changing his own clothes, but Blaine’s as well.  That silo clearly offered limited space for bladder relief given how strongly all the Warbler’s stunk and Kurt was sure the scent was locked into their clothing.  Blaine’s clothing was tossed outside where it couldn’t offend Kurt’s nostrils any longer and he heated some water to wash over Blaine’s body while the man just watched him from where he laid.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

Kurt huffed as he ran a rag soaked with warmed water over Blaine’s chest and stomach.  “Neither did I… but here we are again.”

“I’m sorry it had to be like this.”

Kurt wrung out the rag and resoaked it before taking it to Blaine’s legs, “I’m not.  Those homes were old and dilapidated anyhow.  No one was hurt and because of it all I have you back here.”

“So you want me to stay?”

“Of course I do you moron.”  Kurt sat forwards to run the rag under Blaine’s neck.  “You’re the only one I seem to be able to tolerate for any length of time.”

Blaine laughed at that and then winced, probably having shaken his head too much.  

“Just rest.”  Kurt coaxed.

“Yes Kurt.”

They snuggled up against one another that night, Kurt spending half the time in bed just looking at the man beside him in amazement and keeping his arms wrapped securely around his waist to ensure he didn’t sneak away in the night again.  This time Kurt wouldn’t let him get away.

In the morning, they headed back to town, hand in hand - Blaine dressed in some of Kurt’s clothing since his own were somewhere back near that farm.  Kurt had to admit that flannel suited Blaine.

“Kurt!  Kurt!”  Quinn cried as she saw them approaching.  The woman ran up to them, hair wild and eyes distraught, “Beth!”

“Huh?”  Kurt looked at her intently, “What?  What happened?”

“They took her!  They…”  She turned to look at Blaine, her eyes going from sorrowful to enraged, “THEY took her!”

“Who Quinn?!”

“The guards were beaten… they escaped… those assholes escaped.  We should have killed them!” Quinn snapped, looking back to Kurt.

“And they took Beth?”

Quinn nodded frantically.  “Noah was watching them and Beth came to bring him breakfast… Noah said something happened then, faster than he could account for it and they overtook them before they could react.  One of them grabbed Beth and left a note.”

Kurt had gone from sedate to agitated within seconds and he followed Quinn to the sheriff’s office, which did look like a small army had gone through it.  Kitty was checking over Noah and Azimio while Santana read over a piece of paper.

“They want us to bring them a full wagon’s worth of food and water to a location… and Trent too..”

“No!” Kitty snapped, turning away from Azimio, “That’s not happening!”

“My daughter is more important than your man Kitty!” Quinn snarled.

“Not to me!” Kitty yelled back, eyes narrowed and focused on Quinn.

“Why do they want Trent…?”  Blaine asked quietly, looking between the two women that Santana was now trying to get between.

“Probably because he effectively told them to go to hell the night they invaded the town.” Kurt offered, reflecting back on how angry Sebastian had been when Trent had rejected him.  

“There’s no winning in that deal…”  Blaine mumbled.

“Not if we play out to their demands or ignore them…”  Kurt mused, glancing over at Santana who nodded in understanding.

“We set them up.”

“Precisely.”

Plans were outlined, roles given.  Blaine hovered nearby the whole time, but as much as Kurt wanted to just begin his life with the other man, he was needed.  Beth needed him.  Despite Kitty’s protests, Trent agreed to be part of the plan as the necessary bait.  Weapons were sharpened and loved ones told not to worry as, once again, a group of them set off with the wagon.

Much as he tried, Kurt couldn’t convince Blaine to stay back, and Blaine even managed to convince the rest of the group that him coming would be to their advantage, since he knew the other guys best and could try and reason with them.  Show them their attempt to lock away the dissenting Warbler’s was as much a failure as their attempt to take over the village.  Show them that Sebastian wasn’t fit to lead them, that his ideas were stupid.

And so they set off.

Kurt, Santana, Noah, and Karofsky were hidden under a cloth that in turn was covered with what might have looked like foodstuffs, making the cart look full when it wasn’t.  Blaine, Trent, and Quinn rode up on the front of the wagon while Sam and a small crew of other guards followed behind.  They would flank Sebastian and his crew when they got closer to the meeting point.

They only had to ride for an hour before they slowed, coming up to the point on the map that Sebastian had marked for them.  

“Two of them are ahead of us…”  Quinn said quietly, so that Kurt and the group under the sheet could hear them and be ready for action.

“It’s John and Flint.”  Trent added, as if that made any lick of difference.  

Beside him, Karofsky had a ready hand on his axe, while Santana had her short sword at the ready.  The group flanking had all the guns the community had saved up, leaving Kurt and his small contingent to rely on the element of surprise and their own skill.

“Hold!”  An unfamiliar voice called out and the cart lurched to a halt.

“You’re alive Canary…”  Another voice said, half surprised by the tone.

“Yeah.  Those people you tried to burn out - they saved me.  You guys on on the wrong side here.” Blaine snapped back.  

“Where’s Sebastian?  Where’s Beth?” Quinn interrupted.  

“Oh… they’ll be here… they’re just taking care of your silly old time horse troops.” The first voice noted.

Kurt and Santana looked at each other wide eyed and then, as if on cue, shots were heard in the distance, along with the whiney of horses.  There was a cry of “No!” from Blaine and then the wagon shook and Kurt heard one of the men cry out with a thud.

They couldn’t wait for back-up now.

He threw back the sheet and while Santana, Noah, and Karofsky jumped off and ran around to the front of the cart to aid Blaine who was laying punch after punch into a darker skinned man, Kurt aimed his arrow at the other man who looked like he was about to pull a gun out of his belt to help his friend.

Though as soon as he saw Kurt, he froze and held his hands up.

For the moment they had the upper hand, but there was only two of Sebastian’s goons here, and that left eight more to deal with.

“Where the hell is my daughter?!”  Quinn snapped, getting right up into the face of the man that Blaine hadn’t just pummeled into unconsciousness.  

“With Sebastian… he’ll be here… he said he’d be here soon….”  The man stammered, glancing from the crazy woman in front of him and back to Kurt, still with his bow at the ready as he stayed positioned at the top of the cart. 

“How the hell did you know about the plan?!” Santana asked then, adding her sword to the mix by prodding the man in the side with it threateningly.

“Ah!”  He stumbled in place, “Hunter… Hunter left a walkie on… hidden in the jail.  We heard everything….”

“Shit!”  Kurt looked out towards the forest.  This was bad.  Very, very, bad.  They were in an open area, right beside an old highway with thick forests blanketing the boundaries.  They were at a disadvantage here.  Noah, Karofsky, Santana, Blaine, and Trent were all walking targets, Quinn was emotional, and Kurt wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot on anything in that forest - even if he could spot something from the distance he was at.  Sebastian knew their whole plan, including that they would hide in the wagon, and left two guys, probably expendable in his mind, to meet up with them while the rest took care of the group that was supposed to be their backup.

Shit-storm didn’t even begin to explain how bad this situation was.

Santana was panicking.  She didn’t like it when things didn’t go her way, much less when it meant they could all be in imminent danger of dying now.  “Shit!  We need cover… we need -”

Crack! Ptafffff!

Kurt blinked.  Everything seemed blurry all of a sudden.. and as he glanced towards Blaine and the others from his perch atop the wagon, he felt suddenly overcome with dizziness.  He could see Blaine yelling out, Karofsky too… and then they became blurry for a moment before coming clear again.  

Something was wrong… 

He stumbled back, his bow falling off the side of the wagon as he lost his grip on it.  Why couldn’t he control his hands?  He looked down.

Oh.

A bright red flower was growing on his chest, soaking his clothing with his own blood.  

He had been shot.

Another backwards stumble and he was falling off the back of the cart, and even though he knew he should have been shaken up by hitting the ground so hard, he didn’t feel a thing.  He was numb.

His ears began to work again though.  He could hear Blaine crying out, Karofsky too.  He could hear more shots, a child crying, then a laugh.

And while Kurt wish he could say the last thing he saw before he died was his lover’s face, it wasn’t.  Above him Sebastian loomed, looking down at what had probably been his own handiwork by the way he happily twirled the pistol in his hand.

“Thanks for the delivery.”

Then Kurt felt himself being kicked over, more cries from his friends, and then he was face down in the waters of a drainage ditch, the water replacing the blood he lost, and the air for that matter too.  He wouldn’t just die of a bullet wound, but he would drown as well.  

At least he’d see his parents again Kurt thought to himself as he closed his eyes and allowed the darkness to take him over.

* * *

 

**The reason this chapter is so short is because it was broken into two chapters.  Otherwise it seemed too choppy to me.**


	18. Chapter 17: Light and Dark

_**“Water, like religion and ideology, has the power to move millions of people. Since the very birth of human civilization, people have moved to settle close to it. People move when there is too little of it. People move when there is too much of it. People journey down it. People write, sing and dance about it. People fight over it. And all people, everywhere and every day, need it.” - Mikhail Gorbachev** _

_Lullaby, and goodnight, with roses bedight..._

Kurt was tumbling, weightless, lost in a warm, familiar darkness.  He was safe, he was secure, there was nothing that could hurt him.  He didn’t have to make choices or suffer the consequences of them, all decisions were made for him.  Safe in the womb of his death, there was nothing else that could get him.

_Twinkle, twinkle, little star.  How I wonder what you are…._

He began to see light, and yet, he didn’t want to go near it.  Something was both pushing him and pulling him away from the bliss he had found towards it.  It seemed too far away, but it was coming at him so quickly.

_Hush little baby, don’t you cry…._

A voice.  It was a voice drawing him out into the light.  A beautiful, lyrical, familiar voice.

His mother.

_Baby, mine, don’t you cry…_

“Mom!  Momma! Where are you?!”

Kurt was standing now, free of the darkness and completed covered in light.  It was all he could see - endlessly bright.  No shadows, nothing else.  Just him spinning and looking for his mother in a gauzey haze of transparent gold.

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night…._

Then he spun once more and there she was, just as beautiful and radiant as she had always been to him.  She wasn’t the image of death he had last seen her as, but the woman who always lulled him to sleep with songs, kissed his roughed up knees when he fell, and baked him cookies whenever he asked.  In fact, she looked younger - or maybe it was because Kurt was so much older now - but her chestnut hair fell in waves down around her and her green eyes glistened with so much love.  Love for him.

“Mom!”

He ran to her, embracing her and finding her just as real as he was… well, as anything was in this place.  He was as tall as she had been now, and he was so much broader.  Growing up he had never seen her as slight because she had been so much bigger than him then, but now it was obvious.

And those arms that held him and rocked him as a baby held him back and together mother and son made a muffled cry as they reunited.  

“I missed you so much momma…”

“My boy…”  She pulled back a little to look over his face, brushing loose hairs away from his forehead and cheeks as she scanned him over, “My beautiful baby boy.”

“Is dad here too?  Can we be together again?  A family again?”  Kurt asked, trying to glance into the lit fog around them to see if his dad would show up next.

“No baby boy…”  Her voice was sad and Kurt’s heart fell.  Why wouldn’t his father be there?  Was this afterlife nothing like what the religious preached?  Did his father have to go somewhere else?

“Momma…”

“Shh, shh, shh….”  She insisted, voice softening with each subsequent shh.  “I wish he were here with us.  I miss him too.”

“Why?  Why can’t he be here with us?”

“Because he’s gone sweet boy.”

Kurt looked at her blankly.  He didn’t understand.  How could he?  Was this some afterlife terminology he would have to pick up?

“Come… sit with me.”

Kurt allowed himself to be led, through the light to a place somewhat dimmer, but still just as vacant.  His mother sat herself down on the floor and he followed, letting her draw him in and hold him against her as she hummed to him one of many songs he remembered as a child.

“I only can have you here for so long baby boy.  Let me enjoy it.”

His eyes snapped apart and he looked to her with trepidation, “What?  Why?  Why can’t I stay with you?”

“Because I’m not really here baby boy.”

“I don’t understand…”  He sat up and looked at her.  She looked real, she felt real, she even smelled real.

“I’m… here.”  She tapped his head, prompting his eyes to roll upwards to look at where her finger bopped him.

“I’ve gone crazy?”

She chuckled, “No baby boy. You’re fine.”

This was so very confusing.  He looked around again and then let his eyes settle back on her, “I don’t understand what’s going on… I’m dead… right?”

The smile fell off her face and she looked over Kurt with the twinkle of tears visible in the corners of her eyes, “No baby boy.  Is that what you want?”

“I want to be with you and dad again.  I want peace.”

“Is that why when you saw that bullethole in you that you just accepted it?”

Is that what had happened?  A flash of memory came to him.  The wagon, the cries of those around, the blood flowing so freely from him.

“Yes.”

She glanced down, “Then I’m sorry baby boy.”

“How can I not be dead?”

She looked back up and pressed a hand to his chest.  He looked down at it there, his shirt torn and dried with blood, but there was no bullethole in him, no lasting mark, no pain, and no reason for him to be dead - at least not here in this place.

“When you were born I fought bitterly with your dad over your middle name… do you know why?”

Kurt’s mouth twitched into a half smile.  He had heard the story, moreso after his mother died and his father told it as a way to keep her memory alive.  “You wanted me to have your name as my middle name and dad thought I’d be teased horribly for it… but you stuck to your guns… and then when you died, he said he felt like you always knew it would happen and that’s why you wanted me to have your name… so I’d never be able to forget you.”

She smiled weakly, letting her hand fall back to her lap, “In a way.  A name has power Kurt.  When you took on my name, you took on a bit of me with it.  I didn’t know what was coming when you were born, but I knew you were my miracle that wasn’t supposed to be and I made sure you had every benefit of protection I could give you.”

Kurt tipped his head to the side, watching her for a moment before uttering, “What do you mean?”

His mother looked away, “Do you remember when I was teaching you about the different coins when you were in preschool?  How you were always so proud of yourself for knowing them except for one?”

It seemed the confusion wouldn’t be alleviated anytime soon, not if anecdotes were part of the explanation.  He didn’t remember his mother being so cryptic. “It was a long time ago mom….”

“Quarters… You could never remember the word quarter… and I thought that was always so fitting…”

“Mom…”

She looked back up at him, “See me Kurt.”

He shook his head, “What? I’m looking at you mom…”

“No.  Don’t look.  See.”

Quarters… protection… miracles… power…

He blinked, and before him was his mother still - but taller, more waxen, and ears….

Kurt scuttled back on his hands and legs, “Mom!  No!”

“Baby boy…”

“You’re one of them!  You’re the reason dad died!”

Her face fell, and even though some of the features had become more accented, her face still held the same sincerity, and in that moment, the same pain.  “I would have died with him if I could.”

“They were right… they were always right….”  Kurt looked down at his hands, the only part of him he could see clearly as his eyes started to gloss over with tears, “...I’m a freak.  What’s going on?  What’s happening?!”

“I only have so much time with you Kurt… please… let me explain…”

“Why?  Why… why….”  His head snapped up to look at her again, tears bouncing off his cheekbones and to the air.  This wasn’t right.  This couldn’t be how things were.  It didn’t make any sense.

“Please baby boy… calm down… let me tell you….”

“Dad’s not here because he was human and we’re… we’re Others and in some other kind of afterlife… and I can’t even be with him here… and to know this… and…”  He hiccupped mid sob, head shaking in disbelief.

“Oh Kurt!”  Arms were thrown around him, and Kurt let them.  Even if she was one of them, she was still his mother, and, apparently all he had here in the fog.  She rocked and eased Kurt through his sobs until his face was red and numb and his eyes were dried out, and he was ready to listen.

“What happened… shouldn’t have happened… I should have lived and died with your father and you should have outlived us both.  You should have gone off to a big city and chased down your dreams and used all those talents of yours that I only got to see in their fledgling years… but it didn’t happen… and I can’t change that.  I was called back… and the call can’t be refused.”

Kurt shook his head.  He still didn’t comprehend it, but he was too depleted to question it.

“I made sure you had my name though… just in case… and so here you are.  I’m not really me, not as I might be now, but as your mother none the less.  A piece of me hidden within you and sealed there by my name.  You’re going to live Kurt.  You’ll wake up when your body has healed and you’ll live.”

“But I’ll be one of you….”  He snuffled, face buried against his mother’s shoulder.

“No.  You’ll be you.  You always have been, you’ve just never been awakened to who you are.”

“You were much better at making me feel better when I was little.”

She chuckled, despite his somber tone and brought a hand up to brush over Kurt’s hair, “Well, if I’m not up to par it’s because your own mind is limited when it comes to comforting techniques.  I suppose that’s why you need Blaine.”

Kurt shook his head.  Alive or dead… either way he was gone to Blaine.  No one would want him.

“Do you think your dad would reject me, even now if he knew my true self baby boy?”

God no.  His dad loved his mother to his dying day.  “Probably not.”

“Then don’t give your lover the same discredit.”  

A thought seemed to fall upon Kurt and he looked up, “Protection?”

“For you… and those around you.”

“Is that why…?”

“The Others have never found you?  Yes.”

“But I’ve seen one….”

“They will only find you if you let them Kurt.”

“And my dreams….”

“Are actually just what they say… your subconscious trying to piece things together… though in your case your subconscious has been a little more active than most.”

He clung back to her then, “And when I wake up?”

“You’ll remember… but I’ll be gone.  The magic we use is only good for so long.”

He sighed and shut his eyes, let her hold him and sing to him.  He would have this peace.  He would hold onto it for as long as he could.  Over time her clear voice became gritty and then began to fade, and Kurt thought it was because he was falling asleep in his mother’s secure hold.

At least until he felt like he could no longer breath.

That’s when he gasped for air, and found himself sputtering up water.  His eyes flew open as he struggled backwards in his search for air and he found himself staring back into the plain and highway he was sure he had died at, sitting back in a drainage ditch, submersed to his chest as he leaned back on his knees.

He wasn’t dead… he wasn’t dead….

His first instinct was to look around, searching for Blaine and anyone else.  Maybe it had just been a bad dream.  Perhaps he fell off the wagon and knocked his head and had dreamt up the whole death and dreamworld.

But he was alone out here, and it was night.  He was positive it had been morning when they had all set up and reached this place.  The only indication that anyone else had been out here was the tracks of a wagon and horses, mixed with those of random footprints.

And his bow and pack of arrows were there, discarded on the ground by the wagon tracks like they had been garbage.

The reality settled over Kurt then, especially when he looked down at his chest, seeing the same hole in his shirt with the red bloom sprouting from it.  But there was no hole in his body.  Nothing to indicate he was wounded.  

He had died.  He had seen his mother.  He was a freak.

Now he was alive, alone, and still a freak.

Quietly he stood, his clothes soaked and dripping immediately as he climbed out of the ditch and went to gather his bow and arrows.  His coat was heavy with the water weight and so Kurt shed it, leaving it there as he wrapped the pack over his chest and began following the tracks.  

What had taken an hour by horse, took Kurt two on foot.  The tracks led him back to the town and even though he had not eaten since the morning, he didn’t feel hungry and he wasn’t tired.  Blindly he kept moving ahead, motivated by his own need to protect and ensure the safety of the people who would probably reject them once they had seen his return from the dead.

Like a memory returned, the town seemed ablaze, though this fire was more contained. A central fire built to be huge was nested in the center of town.  Kurt snuck between building and climbed up atop the old brothel to get a better view.  He had lost the element of surprise before and he wouldn’t now.

From there though, Kurt could see another fire in the distance, where his home was and his heart seemed to be shot through again as he realized he was losing his pictures, the letter, and his music.  Those few little things had meant the world to him and he had lost them without even being able to put up a fight.

Around the fire, community members had their hands bound together with rope and chains while Warblers patrolled closely to them, all armed with guns.  Some children sobbed quietly against their parents while those parents tried to calm them and tell them everything would be alright despite the fact that things could not look worse for them.  Sebastian and a couple of his goons were sitting around a table not far away, all with a pistol in one hand and a drink in the other as they talked.  

And Blaine was there too.

Tied up beside Sebastian and kneeling on the ground.  He looked like an absolute mess, hair wild and askew, his whole outfit ripped and covered with dirt.  He had put up some kind of fight and clearly he had been on the losing end.

“We should just let them go.  I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“There’s more of them though then there is of us.  Nothing is stopping them from attacking us back once they regroup.” Sebastian spat at the man who had spoken.

“I didn’t sign on to murder people Cardinal… and there’s kids and everything there…”

“There’s two sides here - us and them.  Which side do you want to still be breathing at the end of this?”

The other man gave his two cents then, “I don’t think I can stomach this… it’s too much… you already killed that one guy….”

“Kurt.” Blaine spoke up then.  His voice was gravelly, but defiant, using the name as his only weapon against the men who had bound him there.

“Yes, yes… your pretty little piece of ass.” Sebastian cooed at Blaine, who glared at him menacingly, his breaths getting deeper and heavier as he looked at Sebastian spitefully.  “I shot him to set an example.”  

“How many examples do we need though Cardinal?”

“As many as it takes to get the point across that this is our town now.”

“But we shouldn’t be fighting them… they’re humans…”

“It’s too late for that.  Now enough of your grievances.  We’ve started this, we just can’t go back from it now.”

“You are all going to pay.”  Blaine spat out.

Sebastian looked at Blaine, regarding him silently for a moment before looking back at one of the men, “Get me that little blondie we used to lure them out.”

Kurt watched them as one of the men went into the library and came out pulling Beth along, tied by her wrists to the rope he was using.  Her face was red and splotchy, telltale signs that she had been crying, and probably a lot.  As she was dragged along she too cried out in defiance, “You’re all evil!  You’re all evil and you’re going to regret this all!”

Sebastian smirked at her little tirade and then looked back to Blaine, “Examples must be made my Canary.”

Blaine sucked in a breath and his eyes went wide along with the men who had stood beside Sebastian.  Surely he couldn’t be serious.  She was only a little girl.

But Sebastian was already lifting his gun to aim, and Kurt didn’t have time to watch anymore, much less plan an elaborate scheme.  Beth was dead if he didn’t do anything now and he was confident she didn’t have any Other blood in her to bring her back to life.

Fluidly he shot, so quickly he surprised himself with how well his corpse moved.  As soon as one arrow was launched another was in his hand and aimed and fired.  He kept shooting, causing surprised cries and gasps of pain as he miraculously seemed to aim by feeling and not seeing.  Each shot pinning it’s victim in the hand so their guns fell to the ground where ready community members grabbed them as the took advantage of the sudden chaos.

It wasn’t until the fifth arrow had been released that anyone was able to figure out they were coming from the same location and eyes and gun muzzles moved towards Kurt as they tried to determine who was attacking them.

It wasn’t until the seventh arrow that anyone spotted him, and shots were fired.  They were recklessly aimed though, and by the time they had a chance to shoot again, their guns were lost to the ground and their hand had an arrow piercing through the palm.  

Kurt jumped from the roof to the wooden overhang and then to the ground with no pause or hesitation between his jumps.  He saw eyes widen when people recognized him, knew he should be floating in a ditch still, and based on the attack he had just made, knew he couldn’t possibly have done it by himself, at least, not without otherworldly skill.

Which it seemed he did.

The shock gave Kurt the chance to aim his last arrow at Sebastian, whose gun was in the process of being turned towards him but stopped the instant he realized his men were down and any chance he had of fighting back was futile.  So he dropped his gun, lifted his hands towards the sky and glared at Kurt.

“You were supposed to be dead.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”  Kurt snarled back and shifted his aim just a touch as he released the arrow into Sebastian’s foot, causing the man to let out a slew of expletives and crumble to the ground as he took the offended foot in his hands to cradle it.  Just because he had given himself up didn’t mean Kurt was going to let him get away with killing him and doing all this to his home.

A slow glance around confirmed that power was back in the hands of community members.  People were being untied and Warblers were being roped back up.  He heard the hushed murmurs, felt the glances being directed at him, and smelt the fear and suspicion, but it was okay, his people were safe now.

As the adrenaline flowed out of him, he dropped his bow to the ground, suddenly overcome with debilitating weakness and dizziness.  Kurt frantically looked around for honey eyes to ground him, but before he could find them, he was in a heap on the ground, passing out to the sweet voice of his lover calling for him.  A voice he couldn’t respond to as blackness overtook him for the second time that day.

 


	19. Chapter 18: Part One Ends

_** “Filthy water cannot be washed.” - African Proverb ** _

Kurt sat on a log, looking over the foundation he and Blaine had built overtop of the remnants of their own cabins.  It would be bigger and stronger than either of their huts from before, and definitely more akin to a real house than what Kurt had existed in for the past decade.  Behind him, Blaine was taking a break, playing a game of fetch with Pudding who was already pregnant again, though in the early stages apparently.  Blaine knew those things.  It was why he was training with Mike and Carole now as the closest thing the community would have to a veterinarian.  He would do that, and work with the workers.  He had been happy to accept the opportunity.  With everyone now adopting dogs, and the horses getting to the point where their breeding really needed to be overseen, some kind of animal specialist was needed.  

The community had built itself back up, and better too.  The new homes were, just as his own would be, stronger and better suited to the weather out here, with a thick layer of sawdust insulation in the frame to keep the home warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.  For the home he and Blaine were making for themselves, Kurt had done a run to one of the closest abandoned villages and cut real fibreglass insulations out of the walls.  He wanted the best for a new place.  This home would be done right.

Even though right now it looked like little more than a stage with some poles coming out of it.

“Hey!”  Blaine flopped down beside him on the log, out of breath and hair a tousled mess.  “You’re thinking too loudly.”

Kurt shrugged his shoulders up, “Was…. just… reflecting.”

“Mmmhmm…”  Blaine nodded and widened his eyes just that little bit that told Kurt he didn’t believe a word of it, at least not in the vague form Kurt had used.

“What?”

“Tell me.”  

Kurt sighed, head turning down to look at his hands which were in the process of wringing one another.  “I just want to be able to explain myself.”

“In general?  Or with what happened again?”

Kurt rolled his eyes and glanced back up into honey, “You know.  It’s not like I have vocalized my frustrations enough around you anyhow.”

Blaine did, Kurt could see it in his eyes.  When Kurt had awoken, the night after he infiltrated the town and put down the usurpers, he had found himself in a bed in the medic’s station, Mike, Carole, and Kitty all talking in hushed voices around him.

“He had scars… I’m not crazy right?”  
“You’re not.  I’ve seen them too.  Heck, I’ve stitched him up a few times.”  
“I thought you said he was shot.”  
“He was.  We saw it.  Me, Noah, Quinn… everyone… all the people who had flanked had been brought around to see him floating in a ditch.  It was red… the water was all red.”  
“Well there’s no sign of a gunshot, or any scars at all…”  
“What the hell happened?”  
“Why look at me?  I don’t have a clue!”  
“I swear… his ears are pointier than normal…”  
“You’re not suggesting that…”  
“God no.  He’s been one of us forever.”  
“How the hell else can this be explained away?”  
“Everyone else out there wants to know.  What are we supposed to tell them.”  
“Again!  Stop looking at me.  I.  Don’t.  Know.”  
“Someone better figure this out, and fast.”  
“We can’t get out of here until we get this figured out… they’re all waiting outside…”

That was the point in which Kurt decided to save them the trouble and sat up, all of them going dead silent and staring at him wide eyed.

“Tell them the truth.”

Mike blinked and looked from Kitty, to Carole, and then back to Kurt apprehensively, “Which is?”

“That I saved their asses from Sebastian and his cronies and they should be less worried about me and more worried about what Rachel and Finn are teaching in that school of theirs if Sebastian managed to get Beth and sneak her through the town.  What the hell happened to teaching about stranger danger and what to do if a kid is kidnapped?  I had to go through all that shit when I was in school.”

He thought his joke (well, half joke anyhow) would at least bring a smile to their faces.  It didn’t.

“Kurt…. you had no pulse for an hour last night.. on top of the fact that a large proportion of the community saw you die earlier on in the day… what the hell…”  Mike shook his head looking towards Kurt and waiting for an answer.

He hadn’t seen his mother during his second death.  In fact, it just felt like he had fallen asleep and was now waking up, sans the dreams.  “I don’t know… I can’t explain it.”

The last thing anyone needed to know was that Kitty’s fears were right.  He did have Other blood in him.  Maybe only a quarter of him, but enough that it would cause panic and fear and completely unnecessary drama.  He had saved them.  His loyalty was to them.  Why would it matter how he came back?

More glances were exchanged between the medics and it was finally Carole who had the sense of mind to come up with something.  

“We say that Kurt passed out in the field because of shock.  The blood was from a nosebleed.  We could say he’s got a history of them.. maybe even say he has seizures or something…. anything to explain how everyone saw what they saw….”

“What about how he was laying face down in the water?” Mike weakly asked, clearly not completely on board with lying.

Carole glanced from Mike to Kurt, who offered up a supply of the rest, “It was a plan…. I was breathing through a reed.  I knew we couldn’t take them then and there so I made it look like I died in order to come back and save everyone.”

Carole nodded, apparently satisfied with that. “We’re the only ones that knew about his pulse last night anyhow since Mike was the first one on the scene…”

“Not completely true.” Kitty amended.

“Well Blaine is in the waiting room and you know he’ll go along with whatever we tell him.” Mike grimly added.

The medics nodded and then looked at Kurt curiously for a moment before Mike asked the real question, “Are you one of them?”

Kurt didn’t need to come up with a lie for this.  “I am, and always have been, one of you.”

Mike’s dark eyes danced a little as he thought and then nodded, “Okay.  I’ll let Blaine in if that’s okay.  He wouldn’t leave.”

Kurt laid back in the bed and nodded, “Yeah… that’d be fine.”

The medics left him alone for a moment, and then he heard the stomping of feet and a rush towards his door which was opened with a sharp slam as Blaine launched himself towards the bed. “You’re awake!”

“Apparently.” Kurt grunted, scanning over Blaine’s face.  His lover was clearly elated, eyes all sparkling making his pupils look accented by honey hued glitter.  Then he saw the butterfly bandage at the top of Blaine’s forehead and the stitches on his cheek.  “How are you?”  

Blaine sat gingerly down on the edge of the bed, reaching to take one of Kurt’s hands in his own, “Fine.. fine… god… I thought you… I mean I saw…. “  He gulped, and Kurt could see that he was forcing back tears.  That was the last thing Kurt needed right now.  He was in no mood to console anyone.

“I’ll explain it later Blaine… for now… can we just maybe enjoy the fact that we get a second chance?  If that’s okay with you?”

“God yes.”  

There was kissing, and snuggling, and a great deal of happy bliss after that.  When Mike and Carole finally decided to let Kurt go on the grounds that they couldn’t find anything wrong with him, and ensured everyone had the same story to share to appease the general public, Kurt and Blaine went to survey the damage done to their huts.

“He made me show him where my hut was and burned it… out of spite I guess… and then yours too for good measure or something….”  Blaine admitted to Kurt, voice full of guilt as Kurt walked into the steaming heap of what had been his place, looking for something, anything, to salvage and coming up dry.

“It’s okay… we’ll make a new one…”  Kurt had murmured then, leading them up to this point, the base of a house before him, ready for the walls to be lifts on.  Blaine and Trent had put some time into researching how to build a house from their limited selection of building how-to books before they started because Blaine was insistent that the home they had should be “just right”.

Just right for what was the question that Kurt had.  He hadn’t asked it aloud though because there was no doubt that Blaine would come up with something fluffy in response that would melt Kurt’s heart and for the next while Kurt needed to stay firm.  He needed to be solid. 

Thought it wasn’t because of Blaine.

Everyone looked at him now differently.  He thought things had been bad before, but now, despite saving their hides, they pulled their children away from him when he walked through town.  A few people had apparently also asked that any meat they had at dinner was not killed by him, as if there was any difference.  

But it didn’t matter.  He had Blaine, and Trent still spoke to him as if nothing had happened.  Kitty, Mike, and Carole all knew to some extent, and still seemed okay with him if not a little weirded out.  Even Karofsky still spoke to him even though he was one of the ones Kurt could have done with less of.  

So it wasn’t all bad.  

Kurt had kept himself busy since the uproar, spending a good chunk of his day out in the wilds hunting and trying to come to terms with the epiphany of his existence.  His evenings were spent chopping down wood for their new home, and trying to cut it with a handsaw to Blaine’s specifications.  He wished he could just steal one of the generators and a power saw for all the cramps his hand now suffered because of all the sawing he did.

Sebastian and his goons were still locked up - the sheriff’s office now outfitted with proper locks - the key to which was kept in an undisclosed location that only Santana and Noah knew the location of.  There was still no consensus on what to do with any of them, and so they sat and rotted down there under heavy guard.  The “good Warblers”, as they had come to be called, had asked to join the community seeing as how their group was in shambles and Blaine and Trent were staying anyhow.  When it came to what to do with the “bad Warblers”, the “good Warblers” were the only ones who had a consistent view of what to do - load them up on the wagon and ride them out far away somewhere.

Blaine, for his part, had been quiet on the whole matter.  Kurt could see it upset him from the fire that seemed to light his eyes when it was brought up, but he pointedly did not want to talk about it.  He wasn’t past being angry over it all, especially with how Sebastian had intended to kill Kurt.

Trent was more vocal.  He decried Sebastian not only for his little riot and hostile takeover attempt, but also for polarizing the Warblers for years.  He explained that some of the Warblers in those cells could be rehabilitated because they just swayed to the side that seemed like it would be on top, while others, like Sebastian, needed to be dealt with severely.  Trent was adamant that Sebastian couldn’t stay though, not with him starting his family.  He couldn’t risk having that kind of danger close.

“What do you think we should do with them Kurt?” Mike had asked of him a few days after the dust had settled.  “You did get hurt the worst by them after all…”

Kurt had shrugged.  “In the old days, they killed people who were a threat because there was nothing more they could do with them… then as things modernised they made the prisons… and then came up with rehabilitation and all that… but now we’re back to a primitive state… we have the mentality that people can be dealt with in humane ways, but not the means to do it… so I don’t know… I really don’t.”

“Yeah… I think my vote will be for shipping them off….”  Mike said, referring to the upcoming community vote on what to do with the lot of them.  Several choices had been narrowed down including death, shipping them away, making them into slave labour, and working for rehabilitation rights.  “What about you?”

“I’m not voting…”  Kurt had said, earning him a look of shock from Mike.  “There is no perfect solution.. and I don’t want a say in anything that I might regret.”

Blaine too, had decided to abstain.

“On one hand, I want them to pay for what they’ve done… but I know that some of them did worse than others… Plus… some of them have been my friends or more in the past… I just….”  He sighed.  “I don’t want to be part of a mob seeking revenge against them.”

Blaine didn’t visit much though with any of the previous Warblers - good or bad.  Since Kurt had awoken, the majority of Blaine’s time had been spent either learning his new trade or with Kurt.

“Why aren’t you afraid of me?” Kurt had asked the first night after he had woken up.  They were staying temporarily in a room beside Trent and Kitty’s - who had both decided to build a home new Blaine and Kurt as soon as theirs was up. 

Blaine looked surprised by the question, bringing a hand over Kurt’s face and setting it on his cheek, “Why would I?”

“Because I should be dead right now… because no human should have been able to do what I did to free you all… because… I’m different.”

Blaine snorted at that, as if it was the most ludicrous thing that could be said.  “You would never hurt me or anyone else you care about. Hell, you didn’t even hurt them really bad.  It was all shots to their extremities just to disarm them.”

“But… that’s not…. Blaine…” Kurt searched for the words to try and tell him.

“Look.  Whether you’re glowing and super tall or just as human as anyone else I’m going to love you.  Now cuddle me already.”

That was it.  That was all.  It was so simple to Blaine where for Kurt it was all unclear, but if Blaine could accept him as he was, then maybe he could too.

“The phones burned you know….”  Kurt had said, wrapping his arms around Blaine.  “You’ll have to sing for me again.”

“Whenever you want.”  Blaine had assured him with a smile, moving his hands to hold Kurt back just as securely.

As spring rolled into summer, the house was built and Kurt and Blaine helped Trent and Kitty with their home which would be about ten yards from their own.  Scavengings into town were mostly focused on furnishing - getting new bed sheets, blankets, and even decorations.  Kurt tanned fresh hides, but it wasn’t like he could make up for the years of lost ones.  

They moved in, much to Kurt’s relief at being away from the town, and made sure to christen all three rooms of their new place - bedroom, cooking area and eating area, and storage.  Blaine’s design was simple yet perfect.  It may of well of been a vacation cabin at a forest resort - and it was theirs.  

As Kitty grew larger around the belly, the naming debate raged on.  One thing that was certain though was whatever the first name might be, the middle names were going to be Blaine and Kurt.  Kurt had pushed that, and because Trent and Kitty shared in the secret of his existence, they went along with it.  Anything for their little one.  Any kind of protection that could be offered.

Even if it was that of a quarterling or whatever the hell Kurt was.

“We could always move you know Kurt…. I’d be alright with it.”  Blaine said to him one night in mid summer after Kurt had become visibly upset when Beth was pulled away from him by Noah, whispers following.  He knew what they were saying.  It wasn’t like it was a secret how reviled he was to most people in the town.  They may have accepted the lie given to them, but that didn’t mean they believed it.  

“No… we can’t…”  Kurt had said back to him, thinking about how he was somehow linked to these people’s protection from the Others.  He didn’t know how or why it worked, but his mother said it did, and even if they didn’t all care for him, he couldn’t say the same back.  He wouldn’t leave and subject them to whatever hell might come.  If tolerating their stares and whispers meant they were protected, then that’s what he’d do.  

“It’s still better here now than it was before you came.” Kurt admitted, and that was truthful at least.  Now he had Blaine, and Trent, and even Kitty to some odd degree.  There would be a baby nearby soon that he’d be an unofficial uncle to and a dog that seemed to get pregnant as much as was possible.  They had their new home, which was beautiful compared to any of the others around, and even though his dad was dead and gone, his name was embedded in the town wall.

So they stayed, welcoming the arrival of Kitty and Trent’s son - Isaac Kurt Blaine Nixon, who Kurt was immediately enamoured with much to Kitty’s relief as Kurt was happy to take care of the baby at night when Kitty was too exhausted.  Pudding kept having puppies, and Blaine made sure that they didn’t only have a dog, but welcomed a couple cats into their home as well.  Eventually Sam and Mercedes came around and would come to visit as well, increasing their circle of good friends to the point where they had regular get togethers, usually at Trent and Kitty’s home since it was build larger and Trent was actually a decent cook.

If it hadn’t been for the threat of annihilation by a magical race or the worry that Sebastian and his goons might return since the vote swung in favour of having them ridden out a weeks solid ride, it almost might have been a normal existence.

And for Kurt, it was more than he could have hoped for.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's it for part one! For now I'll set this fic as complete but when I'm done PIB, then I'll just keep posting on this file. Hope you've enjoyed!


	20. H&HW Trading Cards

 

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	21. Chapter 19: Life Ongoing

It was a rare opportunity for Blaine, just to be able to lie back in the grass and watch the clouds overhead, twisting and morphing into new shapes that his mind translated into pictures.  The fresh, spring grass pricking into his back through his shirt making him just the slightest bit itchy - but not so much that he felt the need to move his hands to scratch himself from where they rested on his stomach, lifting up and down in time with his breathing.  

“Unca’ Blaaaiiinnne!”

He knew the calm couldn’t last.  

Sitting up on the small hill by their house, he looked over at the small figure racing towards him on unsteady, chubby legs that were still learning how to keep balanced while running.  The shock of blonde hair curled out to the sides on the little boy, and no matter how much Trent insisted that he go for a haircut, Kitty always seemed to find a way around going, admitting to Blaine that she loved the little “surfer dude” look on her son.

“Hey Isaac!” Blaine said with a grin, opening his arms out in time to catch the small human who raced into them.  “How was playtime?”

“I gotted’ cookies!” Isaac exclaimed happily, pulling his head away after hugging Blaine to reveal the sugary moustache and beard that complimented his statement.  

Blaine laughed and nodded, waving over to Kitty who had been walking up behind Isaac with baby Gwen in her arms, as he listened to Isaac babble on about the other kids that he had been playing with at the communal child play park - a structure consisting of some small forts, tire swings, and a makeshift slide.

“What’re you doing out here all by your lonesome?” Kitty queried as she came close, “Boytoy get you in trouble for something?”

Blaine smiled and shook his head, watching as Isaac’s attention was drawn away by some budding wildflowers which he ran over to inspect.  “He’s got the twins down for a nap and told me to get out and stop making the floor creak.”

Kitty snorted as she laughed at that, knowing all too well how important getting two babies to sleep at the same time was, much less ensure they stay asleep.  “Don’t blame him.  How long are you watching them for?”

“Just until tomorrow.  Sam and Mercedes will be back from the scavenging by then along with that cistern everyone is gushing over.”

“Well… not gushing… but it IS important.” Kitty stated, sitting herself down on the ground beside Blaine and letting the one year old girl in her arms crawl into his arms.

“I get it.  I’m just glad I didn’t have to go along.  Been on too many trips lately and I hate leaving Kurt behind.” Blaine admitted, brushing a hand over the silky tuft of hair on top of the little girl’s head.  Gwen was such a little cuddler, nesting herself into Blaine’s lap and melting against him so easily.

“He’s got the rest of us….”  

“I just don’t like being away from him.”

Kurt didn’t go on scavenging trips anymore, not since the attack led by Sebastian years ago.  Blaine knew Kurt was being purposely vague in his reasoning, saying that he didn’t want to leave the town without his protection, but also knew that if Kurt insisted on staying near the town, there must be a good reason for it.  

Blaine rarely questioned Kurt on things like that, not when it was something that made him get that faraway look in his eyes.  Things like leaving, how his scars had gone away, or about his mother.

Especially not his mother.

There were rumours and assumptions, most of which still lingered after all this time.  People didn’t say much around Blaine, but he saw the way they looked at Kurt, saw the way they avoided dealing with him or talking with him, saw the suspicion in their eyes.  On one occasion Blaine had overheard one of the women explaining to someone new to the community that Kurt was their “Good Luck Demon”.

“It’s why we’re safe here - him.  That doesn’t mean you should trust him though.  He’s one of them.  If you ask me, they should just keep him in a cell.  Keep him around, but don’t give him too much freedom.”

They should have been thanking him.  Regardless of what he might be, he had saved them all.  Sebastian would have killed them or enslaved them.  He had gone absolutely mad and it was a good thing Kurt had been the one to bring him down because if Blaine had had the chance he would have killed him.  

He did, after all, think that Sebastian had killed Kurt.

It was still quite fresh in his mind, even though most of the last couple years had blurred together in his memory.  His ex-boyfriend, if Sebastian could even be called that since he and Blaine had never titled their short lived relationship back when they were on the road, shooting his lover and then kicking his blood soaked body into the ditch.  Blaine had to be held back as he himself had gone mad in that moment and tried to rush to Kurt, tried to attack Sebastian with his bare hands, tried to cover up the agony inside him with rage.  

They should have killed or cut off Sebastian a long time ago.  They all knew what he was capable of, they just hadn’t been brave enough to speak about it.

“You know, Trent was talking about going to see if those quads you two left behind at the first meeting place were still there this summer.  I think he misses having so much power between his legs.”

Kitty and Blaine laughed at that, and Blaine understood.  He missed being on an ATV, feeling the air rushing through your air in a way that being on a horse could never really replicate.  There was a freedom to it, a sense of wild abandon.  Blaine remembered feeling absolutely untouchable on his quad.

Then of course, Trent had had his accident and he and Blaine had given up their machinery in favour of staying in the community.  Now half of the original Warblers were settled here as well, and half had long been driven away and dumped off in a remote area further west - left to their own devices without quads or their maps.  They only were given a warning - come back and you’ll be killed on sight.

So far, so good.

The community had continued to grow since Blaine had come here as well, aside from the Warblers, there had been small groups that had come past and been invited to join and settle here, almost doubling the population within the past couple years.  Something about this place was safe.  The Others didn’t seem to be able to reach this place - or they didn’t want to reach it.  Whatever the case was, it was a safe haven in an unsafe world and Blaine was content.

He had Kurt to keep him warm at night and share those soft, sweet smiles with.  He had his friends - Trent, Kitty, Sam, Mercedes, and all of the Warblers that had refused to take part in Sebastian’s uprising.  He had a job - part time veterinarian for the animals and livestock the community kept, and part time general worker.  He had a decent home he had mostly built and that he and Kurt had gone to great lengths to make livable and comfortable.

“Maybe Kitty…. they probably wouldn’t start though and you know I wouldn’t be able to convince Kurt to go out there and take a look at them anyhow… it’d only be for nostalgia.”

“Nothing wrong with a little nostalgia.  Now come on.  Let’s go wake up those twins and completely irritate your man.” She said with a wry grin, standing up and making Blaine have to fumble with baby Gwen in his arms to try and keep up with her, Isaac weaving his way around and between them both to the house.

It was just a single level, three real rooms in all - bedroom, living, and dining, though Blaine had added a basement dugout last summer for storage and as a safe place to keep things in case of a fire.  They had furnished it well though, Blaine bringing back a real mattress and furniture on a run with a wagon into a nearby abandoned town.  Isaac and some of the other kids in town had drawn and painted pictures for them that hung proudly on their walls.  Blaine had even figured out how to make a stand and holder for Kurt’s bows and arrows so instead of them just sitting by the door, waiting to fall over as they used to, they now had a place that made them function both as decoration and weaponry.

When Blaine had come out here, Kurt had been living in a hut by himself out in this area, ten minutes from town.  Now they had their own home and neighbours.  To their east was Trent and Kitty, to their west was Sam and Mercedes, and just past them a few Warblers had built their own little bachelor pad. It was a community within the community - those that accepted Kurt and didn’t care what he was.  Their real home.

“Shhh!’  Kurt hissed at them as they walked through the door, though it was for nothing because Isaac bellowed out, “BABIES!  I’M HERE!”

That made Kurt wince and Blaine offered him an apologetic smile as one of the girls started crying from inside their bedroom where the crib was set up.  When it became clear that Blaine and Kurt would be consistent babysitters for Trent and Kitty, Blaine had built the crib in their room.  It took up a lot of space, but it had come in handy for Isaac, Gwen, and now Whitney and Aretha who were making sure that everyone knew their lungs were working.

Kitty and Kurt went to collect the little girls, only a month away from being a year old now, while Blaine was left with Gwen, a month over a year, and Issac, two and half.   While Blaine didn’t mind this age of babies, he secretly looked forward to the day when he could do more than just hold the kids and change their cloth diapers.  He liked the age where he could play and talk with kids, like he did whenever he went to Rachel and Finn’s school house in town to talk to the kids about Others, or animals, or things he’d seen in his travels.  They always got a kick out of him, and Finn always assured him that they loved his stories, even though the kids would always ask the same question at the end.

“Is Kurt really an Other?”

Blaine would solemnly shake his head, “No.  He’s human.”

Then one kid or another would pipe up, saying that their parent told them otherwise, that Kurt had died and come back with superpowers and that only Others could do that.

“Have you ever seen an Other?”

No, they would say.

“I have.  Kurt is definitely not one of them.”

That seemed to appease them, at least until the next time he would visit and the cycle would start anew.  People seemed happy to gossip about Kurt and no matter how much Blaine tried to assure the world that his boyfriend was nothing to be afraid of, his words never seemed to hold.

He had seen Others.  They were long, lanky creatures, with pointed ears and, depending on what specific subtype they were, special features.  Those that could shift into animals took on traits of their animal - feathered hair if they changed into birds, huge and hairy for bears, muscular and soft for wolves.  The ones who had elemental powers were always taller than any of the rest with skin that was hued to their power - red for fire, green for earth, and so on.  There were the pale, albino like ones that didn’t grow hair.  He had seen them in the background of groups and while he didn’t know what exactly those ones could do, they looked like pure evil.  There were more sub-groups, more magic that seemed specialized, and Blaine had wondered on more than one occasion if the Others hadn’t fought between their groups like humans had always done in the past.  Maybe the fact that the Others seemed to overcome their differences made them that much more evolved than humans were.

Blaine helped with the kids and Kitty hung around until supper at which point she took them back to her home to await Trent who was tasked with bringing home dinner from the cafeteria after he closed the library, leaving Blaine alone with Kurt and two babies.

He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t sometimes pretended that the kids they watched weren’t their own.  That he and Kurt had somehow been able to have a family all their own.  

Kurt was gorgeous all the time, but he was especially gorgeous with a baby in his arms and his walls down, singing soft lullabies and locking eyes with whatever infant he held.  Whatever magic the Others had, it was nothing compared to the magic in those cerulean eyes.  

“We’re not having sex.” Kurt murmured to Blaine once both girls were back to sleep and laid in their cribs.

Blaine blinked a few times, looking at Kurt from where he sat on the bed.  “What?”

“I can tell… you’re thinking about me and what you can do with me.  There are babies over tonight.  In our room.  Sex isn’t happening.”

Blaine gave his head a shake, as if to dismiss the silliness of Kurt’s statement, but then he noticed that his pants were tenting.  When did that happen?

“Whenever you watch me with kids you get that far-away look in your eyes and then you’re groping me and snuggling up with your cock at full attention poking me in the back.” Kurt grunted, peeling his sweater off and folding it to set aside the bed for the morning.  

“But….”  Blaine looked at Kurt, exposing his perfect chest and abs to Blaine and then over at the crib where the girls were softly snoring in their sleep, and back to Kurt again, “.... we always have kids over lately.”

“So go out into the woods and jerk off.  I’m not having sex with kids in the room.”

“I can’t believe you just told me to go masterbate….”  Blaine balked, watching Kurt step out of his pants next, leaving him only in a pair of black briefs as he crawled into the bed.

“I’m not having sex.” Kurt reasserted.  “Babies in the room.”

Again Blaine looked over at the crib, and then back to Kurt, letting his eyes travel over the slopes of his body - muscular, toned, flawless, and pale from the winter wearing off his summer tan.  Gorgeous.

“Baby….”

“I hate when you call me baby.”  Kurt grumbled, pulling the blanket up over his body to his nipples, which peaked out and teased Blaine with their mere presence.  “Trent calls Kitty baby and it just makes me think of the pair of them.”

“Angel….”

“And you know I don’t like being compared to otherworldly things….” Kurt huffed as he turned on his side to look towards Blaine.

“Snickerdoodle…”

That got Blaine a chuckle out of Kurt.  “Now you’re just being a dork.”

“You love that about me.”

“I do.”

Kurt’s hand moved to cover up one of Blaine’s which was rested palm down on the bed and Blaine automatically turned his own hand over so he could squeeze Kurt’s in his own.  “Living room?”

“Yeah.”

They scooted out of the bed, Blaine grabbing their “night box” from his side of the bed and rushed after Kurt who was already resting back on one of the futon couches they had in the living room.  He was clearly positioned for seduction, propped back on his elbows, one leg hanging off the edge of the couch with the other one’s knee pointed to the ceiling, blue eyes calling to him.

“We have to be quiet.”

Blaine just nodded, stripping himself of his undershirt and boxers before crawling up on the couch and over Kurt, his hands grasping the sides of Kurt’s chest as he moved his lips up from Kurt’s stomach in a trail up to his jaw and lips.  Legs were spread apart below Blaine’s torso so Blaine could feel the swell of Kurt’s arousal against his stomach through the thin layer of fabric holding it back.

It had been too long.  Fingers were shuffled around erratically, hair tugged and then nipples teased with thumbs flicked against them. Their kisses were sloppy and unsynchronized - Kurt happy to just go slowly and lick along the seam of Blaine’s lips while Blaine tried to burrow his tongue into the depths of Kurt’s mouth in urgency.   There were hot little gasps of air Blaine felt against his temple when he moved his lips to suck a small purple spot into Kurt’s neck, followed by Kurt grabbing at his hips and grinding his crotch up against Blaine’s with a growl.  There was need.

“What do you want…?”  Blaine whispered up at Kurt while he peppered kisses down Kurt’s ribs, stopping to draw his tongue around one pert nipple and grinning inwardly as he heard the way Kurt’s breath hitched and saw his body wriggle below him.

“Just you…. Please.”

Blaine’s fingers curled around the elastic of Kurt’s underwear, pulling them off slowly as he enjoyed the slow exposure of Kurt’s perfectly erect cock which bounced against the bottom of his stomach and then held itself aloft once it was freed.  Lubricant was spread over Blaine’s middle and index fingers and he let it sit there for a moment, soaking up his own body heat, before rubbing the tips of his fingers against the light brown perennium hidden between Kurt’s pale white globes of flesh, spread further apart as Blaine’s fingers made their way in.

There used to be a scar on the inside of Kurt’s hip, just a faint bit of translucent white contrasted to the pink of his normal flesh.  Blaine remembered it from when he mentally mapped out Kurt’s body when they were first together.  He would kiss it, along with other small and big scars that littered Kurt’s otherwise flawless form.  Now Blaine could only see that scar in his memory as he looked as Kurt’s legs while he pushed his fingers up inside Kurt and heard his breath stop as his body clenched around those fingers all too tightly before he remembered to relax and the push became easier.

He knew exactly where to press his fingers, exactly where to rub within Kurt to make him mewl and unravel and writhe, gripping whatever he could find be it a blanket, pillow, or, right now, the curls atop of Blaine’s head as he breathlessly urged Blaine to give him more.  

They had never used a condom.  If either one of them had ever had anything then they both had it at this point.  Condoms just weren’t around anymore.  But Kurt had said he’d only ever been with Blaine, and Blaine had only ever been with with a couple guys before Kurt.  If there had been any problem, he figured it would have made itself known by now.

Not that that was on his mind as he pulled his fingers out and replaced them with his own eager, dribbling cock, sliding into the perfect tight and now wet warmth that was Kurt until he bottomed out and held himself in place, the two of them kissing one another gently before he began to slowly thrust in and out, mind becoming hazy as his lust for Kurt pushed him to move harder, deeper, faster until he was dripping sweat onto Kurt who was muffling his cries with his hands fastened over his lips.  

Blaine loved this.  Not just the sex, though that was great too, but that Kurt gave himself to Blaine.  Kurt wasn’t sappy, certainly didn’t come across to anyone as a romantic, and probably did more harm than good to his public image by being a bit of a grump, but when it came to sex, all his self imposed barriers came down and his absolute vulnerability was beautifully bestowed to Blaine and it meant everything to him.  This was how he knew Kurt loved him back even though Kurt had never said the words.

A few more thrusts and Blaine’s hips stilled as he spilled inside of Kurt, hand fumbling to reach around Kurt’s still erect cock and tug it gently a few times so he could come as well.  Then they just panted for breath and let their eyes glaze over as the fog of their orgasms passed.

“Mmmm…”  Blaine murmured as he pulled out and laid himself half over Kurt, breathing in his smell of grass and leather and sweat.  “It’s been too long… I missed you.”

Hands were wrapped around him and a kiss placed to his cheek before Kurt responded in a mumur, “Our friends have needed our help…”

Spring was always the peak time for scavenging runs that were delayed because of the cold winter temperatures in this area.  Sam and Mercedes were gone now but before that Kitty and Trent had both been gone as well, and then Blaine was usually involved in runs as well so their intimate time had taken a hit.

“Yeah… well… thanks for helping me out too snickerdoodle.”

Kurt laughed at that and rolled on his side, effectively ending their snuggle as he stood up and reached for a small cloth to wipe what trickled out of him before tossing it into the firepit in the center of the room.  “You ever call me that in public, you’re not getting sex for a year.”

Blaine held his hands up, “I’d never risk that.”  

They walked, hand in hand, back to the bedroom and snuggled in for the night.  Most nights it was Blaine cuddled against Kurt, so needy, even in his sleep, for reassurance that Kurt was at his side.  

Kurt, meanwhile, was more of a sprawler, taking up more than his share of the bed as he stretched his lithe body out.  He seemed to tolerate Blaine’s need for contact all night, but never initiated it.

The girls woke them in the morning, babbling nonsense from the crib.  They weren’t identical, which was a blessing because Blaine already had trouble remembering which kid he was talking to at any given time, let alone try to distinguish between identical twins.  Whitney had lighter skin, and smooth, silky, hair, while Aretha was as dark as her mother with a little afro all her own.  Both were well tempered though and always good for Blaine and Kurt when they stayed over.

Not like Isaac had been when he was a baby.  It was amazing that Kitty and Trent had decided to have another after the total chaos that kid was - colicy and sick all the time with only Kurt able to soothe him.

“I’m betting Brittany has a boy.” Blaine noted over to Kurt as they changed diapers at the same time.

“Nope.  Definitely a girl.”

Blaine snorted derisively, “Why definitely?”

“I’m hoping for a girl anyhow.” Kurt responded, hoisting Whitney up into his arms once he was done and waiting for Blaine to finish.

“Aren’t there enough little girls around for you?” Blaine asked, trying to pin the diaper on while Whitney wriggled and tried to roll over.

“After Isaac, and compared to Gwen, Whitney, and Aretha, I think girls are just better socialized when they’re little.”

Blaine laughed at that, finally getting Whitney into her diaper and walking out with Kurt to their living room.  “Wasn’t Beth colicy though?”

Kurt went stone silent and Blaine clamped his lips together.  Little Beth, who was now rapidly becoming a young woman and less a girl.  After Kurt had come back from the dead, Beth was disallowed from seeing him.  Quinn and Noah kept closer tabs on her and made sure there were consequences for breaking their new rule.  They were right at the top of the list of people that avoided Kurt now, even though they had so easily trusted the care of their daughter to him before.  Blaine knew it hurt him, even now.  It must have been like losing a child of his own.

“She was.”  Kurt finally said and then passed Whitney over to Blaine as he went to grab a jar of the mush that had been left behind for them to feed to the girls.  

Blaine took in a breath and changed the subject, hoping to dissuade Kurt’s thoughts from going dark, “Are you sure you don’t know who the daddy is for Santana and Brittany’s kid?”

Kurt shook his head, coming over with the jaw and two spoons, “Nope.  Why?  You have theories?”

“Well…”  Blaine began, scooping out some mush which Aretha eagerly ate up, “... I was thinking it would have to be someone who didn’t care about spreading their seed because I can’t imagine Santana would be okay with some guy telling everyone that he knocked up Brittany or expected to be involved in the parenting.  Santana is way too territorial for that.”

“Maybe it’s someone she has dirt on?”

“You think she’d let someone near Brit if she had something to hold against them?  Wouldn’t she want some fine, upstanding citizen?”

Kurt chuckled and shrugged, feeding Whitney small bites.  “Well… it’d be nice if the baby came out with black or yellow skin - that would definitely narrow down the daddy pool.”

Again Blaine laughed, “Well I think David is too scared of her, Wes too for that matter, and I spend too much time with Mike… and either he likes someone else or is just not interested in sex period.”

“How much longer until it’s born?”

Blaine counted in his head, “Another month.  I’m doing the birth.”

“So you need me to hold back Santana?”

“That would be nice, yeah.”  Blaine chuckled, just imagining how emotional that woman would get when Brittany was in labour.

Blaine did most of his work on animals, but because he worked closely with the medics he sometimes helped out with some of the more routine things like births and basic surgeries.  Brittany had actually requested he be in charge of her delivery because, as she told him, he had “calming hands” that the “baby would love.”  He just went along with it and thanked her for what he presumed was a compliment.  With Brittany you never really knew.

Brittany and Santana were also building a house out in their area, as seemed to be the trend with people who got along with himself and Kurt when they were about to have kids.  Despite the fact that Kurt didn’t patrol anymore, as a result of people complaining that they couldn’t trust him, Santana still spoke to them and often asked Kurt for his opinion on matters.   She was a member of the council that had formed to oversee the governing of the community once it became clear that it was growing too large for people to just oversee themselves.  Mercedes was on it too, as was Mike and Carole.  When there were issues, they decided what to do, and despite Kurt sometimes being raised as an issue, the council had enough people on it friendly towards him that they shut down any dissidence.  Kurt would not be kept in a cell.  If that ever changed, Blaine didn’t care what Kurt said, he would take him away somewhere they could be together and no one could touch them or what they had together.  

He knew Kurt would never let that happen though.  Despite what intolerance the community had shown towards him, he was loyal to them, and while they might not be alright with letting him patrol, it would never stop him from protecting this place.  He still hunted for them in the mornings, despite the fact that a good half of the population refused to eat anything he killed, and he still served the mechanics in the area, even though they were trying to get one of the new guys to do that.  Kurt would never let them know how much their alienation of him hurt, though Blaine knew.  He knew and it made him angry to his core, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Except hope.

He would keep hoping that things would get better.

  
  
  
  
  
  



	22. Chapter 20: Drought

“Another trip?  Really?” Blaine asked of Sam, gawking slightly as he accepted Whitney into his arms.  The little girl trying immediately to crawl up onto Blaine’s shoulder while he kept tugging her back down.

“Yeah… well… it was a short winter and there hadn’t been a lot of rain…”

“Isn’t that a good thing though?!”

Mercedes, standing beside Sam, shook her head, “No.  It means nothing we’ve planted has grown much at all yet.. and we’re low on water because of the short winter and limited amount of snow… We’ve got to make these trips to keep our food and water supplies up…. Otherwise nothing will grow, especially if if doesn’t rain soon.”

Blaine frowned, gently bobbing the girl in his arms up and down to keep her soothed as he considered the implications of their early spring and lack of rain following.  He had thought it was a good thing with all the sunshine but clearly he’d been wrong.

“Do you want me to go with you guys or…?”

Sam shook his head, “We have a full crew already.  We’re going to try and get close to one of the old creeks on the maps and see if we can’t fill up some water barrels.”

“That safe?”

Sam shrugged, “All the towns closest to us we’ve stripped bare of anything worthwhile.  We either need to go further or make riskier trips.  If we run into Others… well… let’s just hope we don’t.”

Blaine’s frown deepened until it creased his face and drew down the corners of his eyes along with it.  He had seen what Others could do.  He didn’t want Mercedes or Sam to be the victim of those creatures who seemed to have no interest or patience for humans.  They were good people, and didn’t deserve it.

“Please be careful…. don’t orphan these girls… please.”

Mercedes sighed softly and reached over to peck Whitney on the cheek, then Aretha who got handed over to Blaine’s other arm so he had a girl on both sides of his body held each with one hand.  “Not if I have anything to say about it.  We’ll take our time and turn around if anything looks out of sorts.”

Blaine nodded, “Yeah… please be extra careful….”

Sam patted him on the shoulder, “You already said that man.  Don’t worry.  You know we’ll come back to you and my little ladies.  It’ll be fine.”

Blaine had watched a lot of horror movies before the Tides in which a main character said everything would be fine only to die in the next act.  He hoped to whatever god or gods that might exist that life wasn’t going to emulate fiction in this case.

He took the girls back to their house, setting things up so they could play on the living room floor without getting into trouble, and waited for Kurt to return from his hunt.  They had the twins… tomorrow they’d be watching Isaac and Gwen during the day while both Kitty and Trent worked…. really, Kurt should just set up a daycare at the rate he was going.  Blaine didn’t know how Kurt could handle all four of the kids on his own when Blaine needed to do his work, but somehow Kurt managed it, and didn’t seem a bit worn down when Blaine came back to him afterwards.

“They’re just little kids.  They have simple needs.  You take care of those and they’re happy.”  Kurt would explain to Blaine as if it was the most trivial thing in the world.

“I spend a half hour with the Isaac and I’m completely done for the day.” Blaine admitted, wishing he had whatever coping power Kurt did - or at least his baby management skills. 

And, as expected, by the time Kurt returned from his hunt, Blaine was a mess - hair askew, drool and spit-up covering his shoulders, and what little they owned in disarray.  Kurt stood back, snickered at the scene and at Blaine’s pleading look before scooping up Whitney, who was crying at the time, and humming to her softly, somehow getting her to calm down and nestle against him while Aretha crawled up to Kurt’s feet and squeaked up at him.

“Just go to town and grab our dinners.”  Kurt said quietly, kneeling down so Aretha could get in some snuggles as well.

Blaine left without question, knowing full well that Kurt had things under control and needing to get some fresh air anyhow.  He was joined by Pudding on his heels, who was happy to live outside and come around when she needed affection or food.  Pudding, whose yearly litter of pups were much easier to handle than a baby.  Blaine liked the idea of Kurt and him having kids together - but in theory only.  When put to practice, he was always exhausted by the idea.  A litter of puppies was much more manageable than a single human child.

He nodded to the people he knew in town, sharing greetings and limited conversations as he grabbed their plates and returned to the cabin, already put back into order by Kurt who had the girls sitting in front of him as he took turns feeding them spoonfuls of what looked like mashed potatoes.

“Mmm… that smells decent.”  Kurt noted, sniffing the air and looking towards Blaine on his re entry.

Blaine nodded, “Our favourite.”

“Venison stew on flatbread?” Kurt chirped back with a half-grin.

“You know it honey!”

The limited meal selections offered by the community chefs had been one of the minor reasons Kurt had continued to hunt and Blaine had continued to go on scavenging trips.   Finding something new to eat and a new way to prepare it in was a delight to them both, and while they understood that cooking something satisfying for so many people with a limited assortment of food was challenging, they couldn’t help but both wish aloud for things they craved now and then.

“Doughnuts.”  
“Creamsicles.”  
“Peanut butter.”  
“Nutella.”  
“Pineapple.”  
“Olives.”  
“Mandarin oranges.”

That being said, the stew was the most palatable creation the chefs made, and was often compliments of Kurt’s own hunting efforts, making it all the more special.

He set Kurt’s plate down on the table and ate his own meal, taking over feeding the girls when he had finished so Kurt could eat.  After that, each one of them took a girl and burped and changed her before rocking them to sleep and setting them into the crib.

“How long will they be gone?”  Kurt asked, sitting one of the futon-couches with a tired sigh.

“Four days, give or take a day.” Blaine responded, sitting down beside Kurt and leaning his body over to rest his head on Kurt’s chest.

“Never seen Mercedes go on so many trips… things must not be good in the fields…”

Blaine sighed softly as he felt Kurt’s fingers weave their way into his hair.  He loved his head and hair being touched.  “They said there’s not been enough rain…”

Above him, Kurt hummed thoughtfully, and Blaine focused in on how Kurt’s finger pads were slowly rubbing circles into his head, working out any and all tension that might exist there.  “I wonder if there’s a way to figure out if there’s underground water sources around here…”

Blaine shrugged, “Don’t know…. I learned cursive writing and algebra and history in school… but nothing about finding water sources or farming…”

“Maybe Trent has something on it in the library.”

“Maybe….”  

He felt Kurt shift a little beneath him, though the finger massage didn’t let up.  “Are you alright Blaine?”

He peered up, looking at those watery blue eyes.  “Fine… why?”

“You just seem tense… that’s all.”

Again Blaine shrugged.  “Just… worried I guess.  I want to be able to help fix these problems but there’s nothing I can do.”

“You’re helping.  You took the girls so they could go… that’s part of the solution.”  Kurt offered, Blaine’s eyes dropping to Kurt’s lips then.  He had never said it aloud, but he loved those plush pink lips.  They had to be the softest things on earth.

“We’re not having sex.”

Eyes snapped back up to Kurt’s, “What?!  I -”

“You always look at my lips when you want to kiss, and kissing leads to sex.”

Blaine couldn’t help but chuckle and let his head settle back down against Kurt’s chest.  “Can’t help it.  You’re kind of hot.”

“Kind of?”  He could see Kurt’s eyebrows lifting playfully in his head when Blaine heard him question it.

“Definitely.”

Kurt chuckled then too, fingers resuming their course over his temples.  “How much longer until Brittany gives birth?”

“Two weeks now if she’s on schedule.  Baby has dropped though so it could be any day really.  She’s really big….”

“Kitty told me there’s a pool on the gender and birth weight.”

“Yeah…”  Blaine lifted his head to look at Kurt as he spoke.  “I hope it’s okay.  I bet a can of corn that it was a girl and 8 pounds 3 ounces.”

The corners of Kurt’s mouth cracked upwards into a grin, “I thought you said you thought it would be a boy?”

“Yeah… but you think girl.”

“I didn’t bet though.”

Blaine shrugged, “Whatever it is, I have no doubt it’ll be in your arms with you singing soft lullabies to it just like you’ve done for all the other babies around us.”

“Mmm….”

“We should build an addition onto the house… guest room for the kids.  We’re quickly outgrowing our little one bedroom.”

“Oh really?”

Blaine nodded, “Yeah… I’ve been thinking about it actually… Take out that wall…”  He pointed across from them.  “... and put in a room with some pull down bunks I saw in one of the how-to books at the library and another crib….”

Kurt sighed.  It was that forlorn sigh he used whenever he was thinking of something far off and Blaine knew it wasn’t good.  

“What?”

“I just….”  Kurt started and stopped, rolling his lower lip into his mouth as he thought out his words before he continued.  “I just worry that we’re getting ahead of ourselves… the kids will get older and then we’ll just have an empty room there…”

“No we won’t… not at the rate people around here are reproducing… and yes.  The kids will get older, but they’ll still be around.  Their parents aren’t like Quinn and Noah.”

Kurt went silent again, eyes growing vacant as he immersed himself deep within his own thoughts so that Blaine couldn’t read him anymore.  Those two… Blaine wished he knew how to tell them exactly how much they’d hurt Kurt by their asinine decision to pull Beth from his life, but even if he did that, he knew Kurt would be upset with him.  Family was important to Kurt, and he didn’t want to be responsible for causing strife in theirs.

“Okay…”

Blaine grinned and leaned up, pecking Kurt on the cheek.  “It’ll be great… and we can turn it into our own little reading room when we’re too old and decrepit to walk to the library anymore.”

He got Kurt to laugh at that, smiling to himself at the accomplishment, and then they retired to bed.  No sex that night, but plenty of snuggling, as always.

Days passed, with Blaine working and Kurt watching the babies.  Kitty announced her latest pregnancy, which both Blaine and Kurt had predicted.  The Valentine’s day dance always had a way of getting Kitty knocked up and this year had been no exception given her due date was set in October.  Trent and Blaine spent an evening taste testing Trent’s attempts at making his own alcohol - all of which were abysmal failures and caused them both to retch up their stomachs most of the night to Kitty and Kurt’s eye rolling amusement.  Brittany also started coming over more because she wanted the baby to get used to the sounds of Kurt and Blaine’s voices since she thought “the baby should be able to identify all the voices of the good guys right when it comes out”.  

Five days passed that way, and when the sixth day came, panic began to set in.  

“There’s been nothing on the radio’s Kurt.  I’m really worried….”

“Do we know where they went?  Maybe we can track them down?” 

“To some old creek on a map they had and -”

“WHAT?!”

The sudden shift in Kurt’s town had Blaine glance worriedly over to the bedroom where the girls were napping while Kurt clapped his hands over his mouth to silence his own shocked outburst before whispering over at Blaine in a high pitch. 

“Why the hell would you let them go to a creek?  What if there’s Others there?!”

Blaine held his palms out, “Whoa!  I couldn’t stop them!  They said they’d be careful!”

Kurt began pacing the floor and Blaine watched while his heart sunk deeper into his chest.  “What if they got caught?  Or killed?  My god Blaine… what about the girls?  Who can run things as good as Mercedes?  What’re we going to do?  What if need help out there?”

Blaine shook his head, “I don’t know Kurt… I just…. I don’t know.  If there’s no radio response by tomorrow morning I know they’re going to send out a search team… but they don’t want to risk getting close to the creek if that’s where they disappeared…”

Kurt sighed, dropping his head into his hand and rubbing his temples with his thumb and forefinger. “God… the girls…”

“We’ll take care of them…”

“They’re not ours Blaine…”  Kurt looked up, eyes full of worry.  “We can’t just claim them… They need their mom and dad.”

Kurt never sought out physical comfort, but Blaine knew he needed it then, stepping over to wrap his arms around Kurt and pull him into his embrace, “I’ll go.  I’ll go with the search party.  We’ll find them.  I’ll find them…”

“Oh you will not go.”

Blaine sighed, running a hand up and down Kurt’s back, “But I can help find them… make you feel better about -”

“No.  If something has happened to them I need you here with me to take care of these girls.  You will not go risking your hide in some stupidly valiant effort to find them.”

Blaine made a single chuckle against Kurt’s shoulder.  “Okay.  I’ll stay… but I’ll man the radios tomorrow and come back as soon as I hear anything.”

“Damn straight you will.”

The next morning is rough.  Blaine forces himself to walk to the center where they keep the radios, worried that he’ll be there all day with nothing to tell Kurt, but instead of that being the case, he’s able to rush back home right away.

“They’re back!  They’ll be here in a few minutes once they get things sorted!”

There’s a lot of relief, and once Sam and Mercedes come to their cabin and snuggle their little girls they tell Kurt and Blaine about the delay.

“So the creek was dried up….”  
“... and we decided to go further to see if we could find a water source….”  
“We did!”  
“But Azimio was a dummy and somehow managed to drop the radio into the water and now it’s fried so we couldn’t radio you guys.”  
“There was no problems.”  
“Sorry we worried you guys.”

It’s short and simple explanation that allows both Blaine and Kurt to relax their tense muscles, immediately jumping one another once Sam and Mercedes take the girls home.  Nearly a whole week without any intimacy again and the stress is best relieved with a good orgasm on both their parts.  Blaine will deal with the fact that he’s late for checking on the livestock later.  The cows can wait - holding Kurt as they pant for breath after knocking the headboard into the wall a little bit too hard can’t.

Blaine watches for stormclouds now that he knows the harvest is threatened if they don’t get rain - but it doesn’t come.  Everyday he looks towards the heavens and everyday it seems to get more clear and more bright.  The dirt is cracked under the browning grass that miraculously still seems to grow without water - albeit thin and crunchy in its form.  They’re forced to gather leaves from the trees to help feed the livestock - not wanting to sacrifice any of the corn or other food they grew and preserved last year just in case, and there’s even talk of how long people can last on their own urine if it’s boiled going around. 

Water rations are cut, and Blaine knows that even with that cut, Kurt is hoarding half of his ration everyday under a floorboard just in case it gets worse.  Breastfeeding mothers are the only exception to the cut, seeing as how they’re drinking for two (or three in Mercedes’ case), and Blaine can start to see the worry in people’s eyes after a week of it.  There’s a desperation to them now.  People are volunteering for scavenging missions like never before, fighting over miniscule things, and walking around with forked sticks from the trees in an attempt to divine where water is below the ground.  Any and all books on water are borrowed from the library, so Blaine brings home books for Kurt to read to the kids instead, as well as a book on building to help him with his expansion project.  It keeps them distracted on the surface, though the concern always lingers beneath their skin.

The first person to crack isn’t who anyone expects it to be.

It’s in the afternoon and Blaine and Kurt are walking through town after having been to the trading hub where they got nails and a new hammer for some pelts and some arrows Kurt made.  A shout is heard over the hum of several individual conversations in the area and everyone turns to pay attention.

Rachel is furious.

She’s yelling and throwing what look like crayons at Finn who is yelling back that she’s being crazy and trying to shield their students from the crayon onslaught with his entire body starfished out as he stands.

“I can’t keep telling these kids what to do and what to know if I can’t hydrate my voice!  They can’t focus when they’re thirsty!  Of course I’m going crazy!  We’re all going to be burnt to crisps by the sun because we don’t have enough liquid in our bodies and no one is going to mourn us!”

It’s over the top, melodramatic, and the first thing that Blaine thinks of as he listens to her is that he’s glad they don’t have school aged kids of their own because he would not be okay with them spending every day with her.  Besides that, it’s scarcely been a couple weeks since the rations were cut and things are really not that bad.  People in the community are spoiled compared to what other groups experience and from his Warbler days, he knows he still has things pretty good right now.

“Calm down Rachel!” Finn tries to insist as she flops down on the street in front of everyone and starts bawling.  The big guy really looks quite lost and embarrassed as he creeps up to her and tentatively kneels down to try and console her.  Blaine is definitely glad for Kurt’s aloof and detached nature then and there - Blaine would never have to go through this with him

It’s then that some of the students turn their attention from their freaking out teacher to notice Kurt and Blaine standing there as part of the group watching the drama unfold, and one of them, a boy Blaine has never remembered the name of, points at Kurt.

“It’s his fault!  Others like him make us have to stay away from water!”

Blaine’s jaw drops and his first instinct is to give the kid an earful, but instead he turns to check on Kurt, seeing what no one else does - the contraction of his pupils as the pain swells inside him despite not flinching in any other way as he pretends not to hear the boy.

“Shut up!  You don’t know anything!”

Beth.  Even now she stands up for Kurt even though she’d not allowed to, puffing out her chest and getting right up in front of the offending little boy who shrinks back as she comes forward.

That’s when all hell breaks loose.

While Finn and Rachel are occupied, the kids start in on one another faster than Blaine can register it.  There are those that seem to be okay with Kurt and those that have been taught that he’s the bad guy.  They’re flinging names and insults at one another, shoving each other and yelling.  Beth just pushed down onto the ground with a yelp, and Blaine can’t even see who did it in the fray, all he sees then is Kurt stepping forward and adding his voice to the small uprising.

“Stop it now.”

He doesn’t yell, or shout.  In fact his voice is as steady and calm as it ever is, but it gets the kids attention.  Those that have a problem with Kurt skitter backwards while the others just watch him quietly and pick themselves either off the ground or step away from those they were arguing with.

By this point Finn has come back to his students and takes over, thanking Kurt quickly and reprimanding the whole group for their behaviour on their outing and giving them a lecture on how their poor behaviour reflects poorly on the community as a whole.

Blaine just watches how Kurt’s eyes connect with Beth’s as they part ways.  Something there is unsaid, something is communicated.  Blaine feels for Kurt, wishes he would take his hand as they walk back home after all that, but if anything, Kurt is more distant than ever that evening as he hides himself away in a book and doesn’t leave the couch.  

There are benefits to him being aloof, but drawbacks too.  Blaine wished he would be more open about his feelings and thoughts.  He’s pretty good at knowing what Kurt is thinking in moments like these, but he wishes that Kurt would verbalize it if only to validate what Blaine thinks he’s thinking.

Blaine also wishes that after Rachel’s public breakdown that people would see just how silly their worries are, but they don’t, and things get worse.  He see’s more people getting snappy with one another in the streets, ends up putting down a couple dogs who’re are dehydrated beyond repair because their owners had no water to give them, and has had to tell Mercedes not to expect as many calves this year because, without the water, the cows seem to be abstaining from breeding.  

“I don’t understand…”  He murmurs aloud in bed one night as he nestles against Kurt.  “... we would have half the amount of water daily that’s rationed out here when I was on the road… sometimes less in certain parts…”

Kurt brushes his fingers through Blaine’s hair as he speaks softly, “People get comfortable Blaine… people get used to certain things… This place and what it’s offered has been the normal for a lot of the people out there for a lot of years now.  They’re not okay with losing it after they’ve already lost so much.”

“We should go away.”

Fingers still in his hair, and Blaine sighs softly against Kurt’s skin.  

“You know we can’t.  Besides… it’s just one season of drought.  If memory serves me correctly,  North America went through several years in a row of drought a hundred years ago or so and they got through it.”

“Not without losses Kurt…”

Kurt is quiet after that, fingers moving again after a moment and lulling Blaine into sleep where he dreams of blurry figures in his past and present with no underlying theme present.  Dreams seem to be the only place he sees his parents and brother anymore.  He doesn’t think about them without being prompted while he’s awake.  His family is Kurt now.  

Brittany’s due date comes and goes, and as she gets closer to being two weeks overdue, Mike notes that they don’t have enough supplies to do a C-section if it’s required.  Santana is riotous and needs to be calmed down, angry over the lack of foresight by the medical team.  Blaine feels guilty when he hears about it, having not been to the clinic since he was trying to solve the calf issue with the livestock and even more guilty when he hears Santana up and decided to do a scavenging run to the closest big city to the community - a three day trip with limited breaks - in order to secure any supplies her girlfriend might need if the baby requires a C-section.

Blaine is even more guilty when Brittany’s water breaks a day after Santana is gone and a healthy baby boy is delivered.  He loses the bet, not only because it’s a boy but because he weighs in at almost ten pounds, due mostly to all the extra time he spent inside of Brittany.  She’s a trooper and manages to get through the labour naturally in ten hours, crying out for Santana and breaking Blaine’s heart piece by piece when he knows Santana won’t respond.  She’s missing the birth of her son, and Blaine will never be able to give that back to her.  He should have checked the supplies a long time ago.  He’s an idiot.

Once she’s deemed okay to move, Kurt and Blaine take Brittany to their own house so Kurt can help with the baby, Eugene, while Brittany heals up.  A ten pound baby had naturally is no small feat, and it gives Kurt some company during the day while Brittany is learning to be a mother and wait for Santana.

The only issue is, after a week, Satana and the crew she takes doesn’t return.

They wait a couple more days, figuring that they might have ran into the same issues Mercedes and Sam had when they were out, but then the two week mark hits and Brittany is crying almost all the time because she misses Santana and is so worried about her, amplified by post-birth hormones which are absolutely raging.  Blaine’s pretty sure his heart is a mushed up puddle in his toes then because he knows if anything happened to Santana he’s at fault.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  Should have checked the supplies.

A search party goes out, and Blaine hovers near the radios anytime he’s not on shift, hoping that when he can go home he’ll have something to tell Kurt and Brittany, but nothing comes through.

Another two weeks pass, and the search party is gone now too.

The panic is huge.  People are crying.  People have gone beyond petty fights to brawling and Blaine is in the medic center patching people up after their fights until they realize they’re out of stitching and gauze and now Carole and Mike and Kitty are all blaming themselves as well and it seems like nothing is going right.

The land get drier, until people stay out of the wind because all it does is pick up the dirt and blow it in their faces when they’re outside.  The grass has stopped growing at all.  The water rations are reduced again.  School is cancelled because Rachel has a total meltdown.

Nothing is okay.

And it all feels like its Blaine’s fault.

  
  
  
  



	23. Chapter 21: Making Runs

  


“Shh little one.  Uncle Blaine has you.”  He said softly to the whimpering little bundle in his arms, pacing back and forth over the wooden floor and gazing down at the little boy, small tuft of blonde hair sticking straight up like his flailing, uncoordinated, chubby, little hands.

In the bedroom, Kurt was working to console Brittany for the upteenth time as she wailed like a banshee.  She cried so much, and Blaine didn’t know if it was post-partum depression or the loss of Santana - probably both.  Brittany had lost two babies before Eugene, both later on in her pregnancy too, and according to Mike and his books, that increased her risk of postpartum depression.  Santana and Brittany had waited until they had safely reached the third trimester for this child to plan anything out.  Why they had decided Brittany would be the one to carry the baby when she had the history of miscarriages was beyond Blaine, but ultimately their choice.  Now, of course, there was the fact that Brittany’s wife was missing, which led Brittany to believing now that she was only allowed to ever have one person that she loved in her life at a time.  In her mind, Santana had been sacrificed for Eugene, and now, aside from nursing him, she wouldn’t hold him or care for him.  Kurt did it all, with Blaine’s help when he was around.

Mercedes had been forgiving, letting Blaine stay home as much as she could to help, especially since her own girls were at their home half the time along with Kitty and Trent’s kids, but he still needed to go regularly to check the livestock and help with the ever increasing amount of problems that walked into the clinic.  Fighting had been on the increase, suicide attempts now too with loved ones missing for over a month, and people just freaking out in general.  Aside from Santana’s run, and the rescue group that followed, they had lost two more groups on scavenging runs - both going nowhere near where the previous lost groups had gone.  Now no one was doing runs and they were short on all medical supplies, and if it wasn’t for Kitty and her natural remedies, they’d probably have nothing.  She at least knew how to make balms and ointments, and was teaching both Carole and Mike so they could keep up with the demand, but even the plant sources of her natural works were limited with the lack of water.

“She’s asleep.”  Kurt sighed softed, closing the door to their bedroom, which had increasingly become Brittany’s room while they slept on the futons.  

Blaine shook his head, continuing to pace as the rhythm of his movements seemed to calm the baby in his arms.  “Kurt… we can’t keep doing this.”

“We have to Blaine.  For as long as she needs it.  What other choice is there?”

He shook his head.  Blaine didn’t know but he did know that between the lack of privacy, the subsequent lack of intimacy, and the stress caused by having a very depressed woman and babies around all the time that he was close to breaking.  

“Here.  Give him to me and go take a break if you’re stressed.” Kurt insisted, holding out his arms and looking at Blaine as if he had read his mind.  Blaine might have argued, but he knew better, handing the boy off and stepping out into the much quieter atmosphere of the outside.

Except the air wasn’t fresh like it should have been.  It smelled like dry, stale dirt.  Pudding whined as she came up to Blaine, sniffing at his pockets and then sitting back on her haunches.  It was the first time she wasn’t pregnant at this time of year.  Maybe she was getting too old… or maybe she was just another animal all too aware of the situation they were in.

“Sorry girl.  I have nothing to give you today.”  Blaine said sadly, reaching over to pat the dog on her head.

Kurt was hoarding everything he could.  Water rations, meat from their meals - making it into jerky, and hiding it in his stash below the floorboards.  He told Blaine he wouldn’t let them go hungry.  Kurt was so sure they’d survive this.  After all, one year was nothing right?  One year of dry weather wasn’t something to get upset over in his mind.  

Blaine wished the community shared Kurt’s mindset.  

He walked for a long while, just wandering through the forest that backed onto their home, Pudding following him for the first leg of the trip and then doubling back when it got out of her range.  She never liked to be too far from the house.  

Blaine had to fix this somehow.   

It took a couple hours of walking, until his calves and thighs were cramped and his whole body felt weak to come up with a plan.  A plan he knew Kurt wouldn’t like and therefore he wasn’t going to share it with him.  When he entered back into the house he looked tiredly towards his room, door still shut, and then to the living room, Kurt snuggled up with baby Eugene - both snoring softly.

He sighed.  He definitely needed to fix this.

Blaine shed his layers and boots, and crawled up into the empty futon, falling asleep easily, his body a mass of aches and worries that were all too happy to be conquered by dreams.  Dreams of better days and being able to snuggle up against Kurt with nothing between them.  

Morning came too soon.

He was awoken not by Kurt’s hand grazing over his chest, or by a kiss to his temple as had become their tradition, but by Isaac jumping onto his stomach and knocking the wind right out of him. 

“Unca’ BLAINE!”

His response was a gasp and a wheeze, and then a quick utterance that he now needed to go relieve himself since his bladder was also hit in the attack, running outside without his boots to go to the hole in the trees where he emptied what little was in him.  God, what a terrible way to wake up.

When he returned he was better able to see what he had awoken into.  Kitty was dropping off her kids and Kurt was Eugene free as he had talked Brittany into nursing the little boy.  Poor little guy, his own mother not wanting anything to do with him because his other mother was missing, and in her broken mind she somehow associated his existence with her loss.  This was going to end though.  

“Kitty.  Wait up for me at the clinic.”

“You don’t have a shift…”  She murmured, arching a brow at him curiously.

“We’re taking Brittany in.  She needs help.”

Kitty just nodded, as if she already knew and Kurt looked at Blaine questioningly but didn’t argue.  The fact that Brittany was so far along in her depression and they had allowed it to get so bad made arguing the matter unnecessary.  She needed help.  She needed to understand that she had a wonderful little baby who just wanted her love.  Blaine was going to do all he could to make her understand that.

Then he was going to go after Santana.

Kurt left Eugene to be watched by Blaine while he got Brittany ready.  She had been wearing the same thing for days, and both of them were pretty sure she had peed herself rather than go outside - which Kurt was also now helping her along with since she had zero motivation to even do that.  When they came out of the room, she still looked terrible, like a ghost with vacant eyes and drooping frame.  She wouldn’t even look at Eugene when Blaine got close and handed him back to Kurt.

“Have a good day with the kids.”

It was all he said to Kurt, aside from giving him a chaste peck on the lips.  Blaine wanted to do more - take Kurt into his arms and make love to him and tell him everything he thought of him.  How he thought Kurt was amazing, brave, brilliant, gorgeous, talented…. how much he worshipped him, probably too much, and how much he loved him.

But that would just tip Kurt off as to something being amiss, and Blaine couldn’t risk it.

He told Kitty his plan once they got Brittany to one of the rooms at the clinic, and had laid her down.  Brittany had, almost surprisingly, come along easily, whimpering every now and then about how she had Santana, “had walked there” or “held hands here”, a total mess but at least one that they could maybe help out now that Carole and Mike were around to help assess her.

“You’re insane you know that?” Kitty said stoically as she put on her apron - a safeguard against any blood spatter or bodily fluids they might have to deal with.

“We lost all of Santana’s group and the group that went after them as well.  Two more groups after that.  Their absence is making the drought seem ever worse.  I need to find them and get them back.”

“What if they’re dead?  Think of that genius?”

Blaine frowned.  Of course he had.  “If Trent had been in one of those groups, would you be arguing with me right now?”

She was silent for a second and then she said softly, “Karofsky was on the rescue mission.”

“I’m know and I’m going… and you can’t tell Kurt until after I’m gone because he’ll get mad… and I’d rather do it and ask for forgiveness than try and fight for permission I won’t get.”

“What if you die too idiot?”

“Then at least I’d have died doing something that needs to be done.  We need to find our people.”

He spent the day gathering supplies, talking with people who had a vested interest in finding their friends or family, and figuring out how to use the radio system.  They were down to only a couple of walkie talkies, and he intended to take both, just in case one of them failed.

“I’m going with you.”  Sam said, stepping up behind Blaine while he was tinkering with the frequencies on the radios.

“No you’re not.  Mercedes would kill you.”

“She knows.  She agrees.  You need my help Blaine.  We need to find our friends.”

Blaine sighed and abandoned the technology for the moment, standing up to face his friend, “I will not be responsible for those girls losing their dad.”

“You make it sound like this is a suicide mission man.”

“It might just be.”

“You have a death wish then?”

Blaine shook his head, “No… I just… Hope for the best but prepare for the worst right?  I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to you too.”

“Well good thing it’s a suicide mission then because you won’t have to live with yourself if you’re dead.  I’m going.”

Blaine sighed and nodded, letting Sam collect food for the trip.  If Mercedes was on board, at least Kurt knew they’d have good horses and supplies.  He wouldn’t have to fight for those.  Assuming they needed all the gear, they’d have it.

The group of volunteers gathered at the clinic later on in the afternoon, scanning over a map.  There was himself, Sam, Azimio, and Jeff.  

“We lost contact with the first group here… the second group here…. the third here… the fourth here….”  Sam said, plotting the points on the map.  It looked like a triangle around their community, and had Blaine rubbing the scruff on his chin as he tried to see if he could figure out a pattern from the limited data.

“Where did you and Mercedes go when you were gone Sam?”

Sam pointed to a place and then explained how they had gone along the creek labeled on the map until they had actually found water.  It was all within the triangle.

The others had similar thoughts.  

“It’s like a reverse Bermuda triangle man.”  Jeff said, head tilting to the side like a curious puppy as he looked it over.

“Well… limited data… for all we know it’s a reverse Bermuda square or pentagon or circle… but yeah… odd indeed.” Blaine noted, connecting the points of the triangle together.  “Let’s go towards where we lost the first two groups and stop before we reach this invisible border.  Bring binoculars so we can see far ahead… scope things out before we cross any lines.”

“Any ideas of what we might be up against?” Azimio grunted.

Blaine shook his head.  “Others, a human group, natural disasters, an uprising of rabbits…. no clue.  We have nothing to go on.”

“I had a rabbit when I was a kid.  His name was Skippy.  He pooped EVERYWHERE.”

Everyone turned to look at Jeff, eyebrows rising at him.  He shrugged when he saw their expressions, “Just sayin’.”

Not everyone knew they were going.  They didn’t want to instill false hope in those that had lost loved ones to what they were now calling “The Triangle” in their small group as they prepared.  They packed small bags of rations, just in case they found one of the other groups and they needed nourishment, but otherwise only planned on taking their own food and water, weapons, and the walkie’s - keep things light so they could move fast.  

Blaine took a break to check on Brittany, who had just taken a questionnaire with Carole and then had Mike look her over.  She was sobbing in the clinic bed, clutching the pillow and crying for Santana.  Seeing her like that reaffirmed his need to go.  She deserved to know what had happened to Santana one way or another.

“Well… postpartum depression for sure…. I’ll send Kitty back to Kurt with whatever formula we have.  She’s working on making a vitamin tea for Brittany to maybe help with some of the symptoms, but it’ll take some time before anything works.  Thankfully we have Kurt with the little one.  He’d have made a good dad….”  Mike said when he and Blaine were alone in the lobby.

Blaine nodded, “I know….”

“Even if you find Santana, it won’t fix Brittany.”

Blaine looked up, “But it’ll help… and that baby will have both his mothers then.  She should have never gone…”

“It wasn’t your fault Blaine.  We’re short on everything and it has nothing to do with you.  We’ve used up everything the other towns around here have to offer.  We need to start making our own things to deal with health issues… we just weren’t ready to accept that I think.  Now we have no choice.”

“I’m going to find them Mike.”

It was that strong determination that forced Blaine to walk into the library in the afternoon before they were planning to leave, Trent giving him one solid, angry glare when he entered that immediately told Blaine that Kitty had told him.

“You’re an idiot.”

Blaine nodded, “Maybe.”

“What’re we supposed to tell Kurt?”

“The truth.”

“He’s going to be irate Blaine.  Why are you doing this to him.”

“Because I can’t just stand by idly.  Not anymore.  Not since Charles and Sebastian.”

They were quiet for a minute, reflecting on the moment that had caused the division in the Warbler ranks years ago and what it had led into.  Charles had diabetes.  They had traded, made risks, and collected those damned ears to keep Charles alive.  

“We should leave him behind.” Sebastian had argued to the group when Charles was asleep one night, exhausted after what had been a short day.

“He’s one of us.” Blaine had argued back, reaching to take Sebastian’s hand and find it pulled away.

“He’s an inconvenience… and he slows us down.  It’s getting harder and harder to find insulin.. and then what?”

“Then we still keep looking. He’s our friend Sebastian.  If you had diabetes we’d do the same for you!” Trent had argued from where he sat.

Hunter grumbled from beside Sebastian, “Even if it means we have to check coastal cities?  He’s one person.  We’re many.  We can’t risk all of us for one of him.”

“It’s not right not to though.” Jeff insisted, looking worriedly between them all in that all too twitchy manner about him.

“Let’s just… not have this conversation.  This is a bad conversation to have.  A dark one.”  Wes said, getting nods from most of the group, Blaine included.  It was a slippery slope - talking about something like that.  

So when Charles was found a week later, dead in his sleep, looks were given, tears fell, but no one said a thing.  

“Probably had one of those sugar seizures and choked on his own spit or something.” Sebastian had offered as a means of explanation.

No one said it, but they all knew.  Someone had killed Charles.  Someone from THAT side of the Warbler group.  That’s when the division really grew within their group, and instead of dealing with it, they ignored it.  The continued to move from place to place knowing that one of them was a murdered, if not a couple or a few of them.  Blaine broke off what little he had with Sebastian shortly thereafter, the fact that Sebastian wasn’t interested in being a one-man kind of guy making it easier, though for Blaine, it had more to do with the fact that he knew, deep in his heart, that Sebastian had been a part of Charles’ death.  

And because they had never addressed that death, that side of the Warblers was allowed to flourish in their dark mindset, until the point they had locked up the other half of the Warblers in the silo several years before and tried to take over the community, tried to kill Kurt, and tried to take everything away from Blaine that had given him peace.

If they had just dealt with the murderers in their group, that could have been avoided.  Blaine would never again allow darkness to thrive when he could do something about it. 

“This isn’t the same as what happened to Charles Blaine.”  Trent said, bringing Blaine out of his memories and back to the present.

“There’s still something I can do though Trent.  I’m not going to do nothing just because it’d be easier for me.  You’ve seen Brittany.  She’s a wreck without Santana.”

“But she’ll manage.  Everyone managed before when the Tides happened.  Our world isn’t safe Blaine, and one of the downfalls of a place like this is that people get too complacent and think that everything will be alright.  If the Tides showed us anything, it’s that we can’t be totally comfortable.” Trent insisted, slamming a palm down on the counter for added effect.

“Is that why you’re with Kitty and having kids by the litter Trent?  Because based on the way you just described how things are, that doesn’t seem very responsible.”  Blaine spat back.

Trent sighed and slumped down into his chair behind the counter.  “That’s not… it’s not the same Blaine.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“Kitty… the kids… they’re hope for the future.  Even if the world isn’t safe… they give it meaning.”

“And you wouldn’t go looking for them if one of them disappeared?”

Another sigh.  “You’re using my words against me Blaine.”

“And you’re contradicting yourself.  I’m going, and I need to you look out for Kurt and Eugene while I’m gone.”

“Blaine….”

“And give him this.” Blaine pulled an envelope out of his pocket and handed it over.

“For Kurt.”  Trent read off the envelope somberly before tucking it into his pocket.  “I can’t talk you out of this?”

“No.”

“Can you at least promise you’ll be safe and turn around if anything looks out of sorts?  Even remotely?”

Blaine nodded.  “The people who’ve lost family though… they’re owed much more than worry and wonder though.”

“Unless of course you just join that list of disappeared and make it worse.”

“I won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

Blaine shrugged, “I don’t.  But I have to hope - just like you do.”

They stood then, giving one another a brotherly hug before Blaine stepped out of the library, taking a pause and breathing in that musty, stale scent that had overtaken everything.  They had been spoiled out here.  Where in most communities they fought and argued over water, here they had a system that had only now failed because of the short winter and lack of rain.  People had gotten too complacent, and it had cost them.  

He felt bad, not telling Kurt what he was about to do, but he knew with every fibre of his being that Kurt would pin him down if it meant keeping Blaine here and safe and Blaine couldn’t let that happen.  He needed to go and find their people.  He needed to help Brittany.  He needed to make sure that whatever was out there making their people go missing didn’t come into the community and take away those he cared about - Kurt chief among them.  He had almost lost Kurt once, he wouldn’t risk it again.  

“Ready?”

Blaine looked up, finding himself face to face with Sam and nodding solemnly.  It was time.  Together they walked to the center of town where their four horses were waiting and climbed on.  Goodbye’s had already been said to those that knew, with only Mercedes left there to whisper a teary goodbye to Sam, promising the girls would get kisses in his name that night.

Then they were off.

The first leg of the journey was done in silence, all of them much too jumpy and overly alert even though they knew they were well within the line they had drawn earlier that day.  Blaine knew Sam was probably focused on Mercedes, Azimio on his pair, and Jeff on… well… whatever Jeff thought about - like Brittany, Blaine was never really sure.  Blaine on the other hand was trying to not think about Kurt, knowing that by now he had been told and was probably fuming.  He tried not to think about how he could be nestled in Kurt’s arms right now instead of on the road, each trot of the horse causing a small spike of pain go up his back muscles which were definitely starting to feel closer to thirty than to twenty.

They stopped to set up camp and sleep, though Blaine had to wonder how much any of them really slept since they were all too quiet as they laid in place - no snoring or wheezing or anything that would indicate they were at ease and at rest.  After a few hours of that, they were back in the saddle, heading towards the line that made all their hearts seem to beat that much faster and make them all the more on edge.

“It’s just a line we drew on a piece of paper guys… come on…” Blaine said softly as they reached the road where the line crossed, leading them over it and holding his breath.  Nothing came of it, and he sighed with relief, leading them on - though with a lot more diligence than before.  

Six more hours they continued on, only stopping to stretch and test the radio frequency, Sam being the one to talk over it to ensure Mercedes he was alright still and Mercedes telling him what Blaine already knew.

Kurt was mad.

“You know….”  Jeff began, looking around the area they were slowly walking the horses though, another nondescript field of flat brown land, “If you made a midpoint between the intersection of first point and the second point, and then drew a line from the third point equidistant to the length of the triangle sides… it’d be around here.”

They all looked around, Blaine personally wondering what that had to do with anything aside from the fact Jeff had apparently been paying more attention in the math classes they had before the Tides than he had, when a flash of light made them all yelp in surprise.  It was so bright, blinding even, and Blaine put his forearm over his eyes to protect them and try to see what had caused the sudden burst.  

But all he could make out were shadows, and then the world seemed to spin and shake under them and he slipped off his horse, hitting the ground hard and trying to scramble back to his feet except he couldn’t remember how to use them.   How did he make the muscles work together with the bone?  Where were they even on his body?

Voices crept over him, and in the intensity of the light he still couldn’t see anything or who was coming towards him.  What Blaine did feel though was vertigo coursing through him and making him grip the dirt under his hands to hold himself in place because it felt like he was going to fall off the earth that, up until a moment ago, had been painfully flat.  

“Kurt…. Kurt!”

He cried out his lover’s name, knowing it wouldn’t do any good.  Blaine had missed whatever hints that there was anything amiss about where they had ended up and it was that was making him lose control of his body now, complete with his ability to stay away as he fell into a very sudden, very deep sleep, with no dreams to console him - only blackness.

 

 

 

 


	24. Chapter 22: Caught

“I think they said something about a circle… or it could have been seaweed.”

“Well which is it blondie?!”

“I don’t know!  I don’t have the translation guide in front of me and it was made by guys I didn’t entirely trust to begin with!”

“Well then what’s the use of you?!”

That’s the argument Blaine woke up to.  He heard the voices first before he actually groaned and opened his eyes, drawing the attention of the owners of the voices.

“Blaine!”

He blinked a few times, focusing in on Jeff’s face in front of him, then turned his head to see Sam there too.  Behind them, and he had to blink to make sure he wasn’t seeing things, was Santana as well as the whole flock of missing members of the community.

“What?  Where am I?  We?”  He asked, looking from face to face and recognizing them all, allowing Azimio to help him up with a pull of the hand.

“The Others have us munchkin.”  Santana snapped, still as irritable as ever.  She didn’t look any worse for wear despite being missing for two months.

“Explain.”

In turn, each group rattled off their stories, each one with the same pattern of events.  They had reached a certain point in their travels where they lost all control of their horses and bodies, and woke up here - which they had yet to determine the exact coordinates of.  Each one of them had been scanned by odd Other devices, looked up and down, yelled at in the foreign language of the Others, and then put into this odd, white and glowing holding cell.  Apparently every time they got more prisoners, the cell expanded with a life of its own.  Food was somehow teleported into the room as well, and waste matter transported away.  Santana spoke about how she had tried a hunger strike, only to be plucked by the room with Other magic and force fed courtesy of their ability to make her body do as they wanted.  She decided then she wouldn’t allow herself to be puppeteered by them again, and ate, making sure everyone else did as well.

“How’s Brittany?” was Santana’s next question, looking pointedly at Blaine for the answer, eyes rounded with more than just curiosity, but worry too.

“She…”  He looked from Sam, to Karofsky, to members of the other groups, trying to mentally ascertain what they had said.  In the end, he went with honesty since none of them seemed particularly readable. “She needs you Santana.  We need to get you out of here.”

Santana sighed, wringing her hands together in front of her.  “Tell me something I don’t know.  If there’s a way to get out of here, we haven’t found it… at least not yet.  What about the baby?”

“Eugene.  He’s good.  Kurt has been taking good care of him.”

Santana nodded, looking a little more relieved to hear that and tilting her head up to let the light glow of the ceiling force tears back into her eyes.  Blaine noticed then that while she still looked healthy and fed, she was clearly exhausted and stressed.  Dark circles below her dried out looking eyes - telltale signs of crying hard and long.  She had bite marks from her top teeth on her lower lip, and her nails were chewed down as far as was possible and then some.  It was like her sadness was a mirror of Brittany’s when Blaine had left.  

“They’ll be here for you soon Blaine… did you happen to study any Other translation guides in your time with the Warblers too?”

Blaine blinked and looked over to Jeff who explained, “We got that translation guide the year Blaine was in the community along with Trent.”

“Translation guide?”

Jeff nodded, “Nick and I traded a Renegade some creamed corn in a can for a copy of it.  Words they figure they knew from the Other language.  We studied it like crazy… Never figured we might actually need to know it… just got it for the sake of curiosity.”

“So you can speak it?”

Jeff shook his head, “If my interrogation was any indication then no… I definitely can’t.  I think they asked about a circle and power and maybe something about candy - but I’m not convinced on that last part.  They have all sorts of weird intonations and the same sound can mean different things depending on the pitch they use to say it.”

Blaine shook his head, “Well it would help to be able to speak what they do…  Why haven’t they killed us?”

A chorus of shrugs went up through the room.  So helpful.

“How long was I out?” Blaine asked then, turning to Sam.

“Azimio and I were out for a full day according to them…”  Sam said with a nod towards the community group in there, “... and Jeff woke up about a half day later… and now you… so I’d guess about two days for you.”

Blaine shook his head, setting a hand on his stomach which growled to confirm that length of time passing.  “That’s insane…”

“That’s insane?  Try spending two fucking months trapped in a glowing room that’s probably being watched by those creepy long legged bastards as you squat to pee because there’s no possible way you can hold out for a toilet any longer!”  Santana snapped at him.

Blaine cringed, face contorting as he tried to give her a sympathetic look even though he was sure he just looked disgusted.  Granted, she had been trapped in here for a couple months.  Going a little stir-crazy had to be expected.

Blaine was asked if he knew anything more about how relatives and friends were doing in the community by those that had been here for awhile, telling them what they needed to know, and, on occasion, leaving out the fact that their family and friends might have been so depressed that he had seen them in the clinic and treated them for problems arising out of that.

“So… how have you even been sleeping in here…?”  Blaine asked as he looked around the unfurnished room.

“Uncomfortably.”  was Santana’s grunt of a reply where she had sat herself down on the floor.

“And to pass the time?”

“We piss one another off.”

“Great…”  Blaine drawled out with a sigh, stepping around in place.  Most people were sitting down, or laying down on the ground now.  Azimio was speaking softly with Karofsky, nodding every now and then, while Jeff tried to get comfortable on the floor, tossing every which way and irritating the people around him.  

“We can’t just accept this…”  Sam whispered to Blaine, standing quietly aside him still as they looked over the group.

“What can we do though?  You heard Santana… they’ve been here two months… they’re not stupid people.  If there was a way out you think they’d have found it by now….” Blaine whispered back with a small shrug.

“I am not accepting this as my fate.  I need to get back to my girls.”

Blaine nodded, sighing once more as he thought of Kurt.  God… Kurt was going to be so pissed off.  Blaine should have told him… or asked his permission… or… anything. Why had he been so stupid?

As he thought about how he would explain himself to Kurt, if he was ever given the opportunity, a hum filled his ears and he felt a tingle go up through his core.  In one instant he was still in the white room, and when he blinked, he was in another - darker, filled with what looked like screens but projected three dimensional images instead of flat ones.  He tried to move, but found his limbs useless once again.  He could only look, and try to inwardly talk his heart down from the rapid beating it had taken up inside him.  He knew this was coming, but it didn’t make it any less terrifying.  

Blaine had only ever seen Others from afar, Halflings as dead bodies… and now… to know he was going to be interrogated by them was scary to say the least.  These were the creatures that had turned the world upside down, that likely killed his family, that pushed humanity onto the endangered species list.

One of them stepped into his view.  They were all tall, but this one seemed like a giant, and unlike the ones he’d seen before, he was hairy.  Chest exposed with tribal like tattooing only breaking for the dark fur lining his olive toned body.  His face looked like something out of one of those old muscle magazines Blaine used to masterbate to when he was still a young teenager - all chiseled and rectangular and meaty.  Then of course, there were the pointed ears, also rimmed with fur at the top.  This one, this one was one of those shapeshifting ones.  Blaine was sure of it.

The creature in front of Blaine made a series of pitched noises that sounded vaguely like latin opera and made Blaine cringe in place.  It wasn’t a pleasant language to listen to, especially when it seemed so angry sounding all the time.  He remembered people joking about how Arabic or German always sounded angry no matter what was being said, but those two language had nothing on the words the Others spoke.

The Other huffed as he got no response out of Blaine and stepped away, another taking his place.  This one wasn’t as tall, but was infinitely more frightening.  The skin was pale to the point of being grey, no hair to speak of on the head, and probably none under the dark cloaking it wore.  What was truly scary about it was the way it lacked any discernible pupils and only had whiteness looking towards Blaine which was set against hollowed cheeks and an all too sharp jawline.

Again he was spoken at, and again Blaine couldn’t respond.  Did they really expect him to understand what they were saying?

The pale one rattled something off to the hairy one and then went to the counter behind them, grabbing a small, coin shaped and sized bronze object off the counter and then holding it front of Blaine.

“Slaap’ka!”

Blaine’s brow furrowed, looking at the coin-thing and then back to the white eyed Other.  What did they want?

“Hurr…”

The coin-thing was set back on the counter then and a couple foreign looking devices were grabbed, one by each of the Others present, who waved them up and down over his body as he mentally chanted ‘Please don’t probe me’ inside his head.

One of the devices started making a lot of sharp, static noises, making both of the Others there perk up and start speaking to one another fluidly before they scanned him over with it again, eliciting the same response.  

Whatever that thing had picked up on him, couldn’t be good.  He knew that much just by watching how excited their reactions were.

They both yelled at him now, and he winced and just let them - because, really, what else could he do?  He was fixed in that position and had no way of being able to communicate with them.  He was trying to figure out what they were saying, but like Jeff had said, they used the same sound at different pitches all over the place.  It was damn near impossible to keep track of.

Then, his body went tingling again, and he heard the hum once more as he found himself whisked back into the white room, body back in his control.

“Well?” Santana perked up, looking at him like it was no big deal that he had just been teleported by magic.  

“I uh….  I have no idea what just happened…”  Blaine said, looking around to make sure he was actually back.

“Of course you don’t.”  She sighed and flung her arms up into the air, “None of us do.”

“Did you guys have the same ones?  A shapeshifter and one of those creepy white-eyed ones?”  Blaine asked, looking over to Jeff.

Jeff nodded, but everyone else seemed a little more confused.  Blaine realized he had only ever given them the quick notes on identifying subtypes of Others.  “Shapeshifters take on features of what they can change into… there was a super tall, hairy one… wouldn’t be surprised if he changed into a bear or wolf or something…”

A small chorus of ‘oh’s came up and then everyone was nodding, talking about the weird tattoos all over that one’s body or how that one could have dominated professional wrestling back in the human world.

“What about the white eyed one?”  Santana asked then, breaking the conversations up as everyone looked back to Blaine and Jeff.

“Well… ah…. from what we know they’re not really fighters… they have more magic than most Others we think…. A renegade we ran into once describes them as the mad scientists of the Other world.”  Jeff offered.

“Oh good… well then… all we have to worry about is explosions and bear attacks.”  Santana grumbled, arms folding over her chest as she leaned back against the wall with a huff.

“Remember that Other you guys saw the year I was first in the community Santana?  That was a shapeshifter too… only a bird one… You should be afraid of a bear one though… it would be all the power of a bear, but with the mind of an Other… mauling would be easy….”  Blaine murmured, shuddering at the thought.

“Well he hasn’t killed me yet so colour me unconcerned.” 

That was the end of the discussion, everyone returning to their doing of nothing and Blaine sighing as he sat himself down in the place he had been standing, looking the room over, hoping that miraculously he’d find some kind of hole or crawlspace he already knew wasn’t there.  He needed to fix this.

Except that the more he looked around, the more he realized he couldn’t figure a way out of this.  All his time on the road with the Warblers hadn’t prepared him for being caught by the Others any more than his time in the community had.  How did you fight back against magic when you didn’t have any or understand it?  

So Blaine slept, hoping that sleep would give him some inspiration for escape, leaned up against Sam and Sam leaned up against him as they both dozed awkwardly and uncomfortably - just as Santana had warned them.  No dreams surfaced, as least not long enough for him to remember, especially since every so often he’d wake just long enough to remember the unfortunate state of his affairs and reposition himself to try and be more comfortable as he fell back asleep.

Sleep didn’t bring inspiration though.  It only brought about muscle aches and a feeling of more exhaustion than he had when he initially tried to doze off.  How had they occupied their time up until now, Blaine wondered, glancing around at the equally drained and soul absent shells of humans around him.  People weren’t even talking.  It was like they had given up and accepted their fate - whatever it was.

“We need to do something…”  he uttered, looking over to Sam for affirmation and finding the blonde man dozing against his shoulder, a trail of drool down his cheek and almost at Blaine’s jacket.  “... Sam!  Hey!”

“Huh!  Wha?”  Sam snapped his head up and looked around before looking back to Blaine and rubbing his cheek off, “What?”

“We need to do something.  Everyone here has already given up.”

“Maybe because there is no hope man… I mean… have you seen where we’re being held?”

Blaine scanned the room over once again.  Plain white room, that glowed incessantly, making it impossible to get a decent sleep without covering up your eyes… Uncomfortable surroundings made it hard to sleep at all.  Nothing to stimulate the mind around, and Blaine was sure there was a small buzz of white noise.

“This whole place is designed to keep us too worn out to fight… always on the edge of sleepiness but never rested..”  Blaine mused quietly back to Sam.

Sam eyes the place over and nodded in agreement, “Yeah… but what good does knowing that do us?  Humans have caged each other in shitholes for centuries before the Others came along when they wanted a psychological advantage. How did people get around it then?”

“Not sure… never took that much history before the Tides happened…”

They both sighed together and nodded in unison, trying to wrack their frazzled brains for an answer. 

“You figure the room’s organic?”

Sam peered sidelong at Blaine, “You mean like… alive?”

Blaine nodded.  “They said it grows out every time someone new comes in.”

Sam looked it over, as they had again and again, “Hard to tell… the way everything glows makes it hard to see the details in the walls… you have to squint… it could just as easily be them opening up a new section by opening a wall or something…”

Blaine sighed, “You think anyone has tried feeling the edges of the walls yet?”

“They’d have been stupid to not to.”

“Want to feel it with me anyhow?”

“Nothing else on my schedule man.”

They scooted to the closest wall and began feeling around the connection from the wall to the floor, each moving in a separate direction.  Aside from the fact that it stung to look at, what with the bright light in their eyes, it still felt as any wall did connected to the floor.  

“We’ve tried kicking them down, punching them….”  Santana mumbled as she watched them lazily, “They don’t budge.  You’re wasting your time.”

“We have time to waste.”  Blaine grunted, eyes looking upward.  “What about the ceiling?”

“It’s too high to reach.  It’s made for their monstrous height.”

Blaine looked over at Sam, “Hey.  You think you can hold my weight?”

Sam nodded, and the pair came back together, working together to figure out how Sam could lift Blaine up on his shoulders and getting Karofsky and Azimio over as well to help.

Even with Blaine crouching on Sam’s shoulders, he could still only just reach the ceiling, but it was enough, and he stretched himself out to feel along the ceiling.  For the most part it felt like any other flat ceiling he’d touched before, but once they reached a corner, his finger was able to push past something foamy feeling, drawing the attention of everyone in the room as they all held their breath.

Then there was a buzz, and a jolt went through Blaine, knocking him clean off Sam’s shoulders and onto the floor where he gasped for breath as electrical jabs stabbed him with tiny little knives all throughout his body.  He didn’t know pain could be THAT painful.

“Blaine?!  Blaine?!”  Sam’s head hovered over his own as Blaine worked on remembering the dynamics of breathing. 

“Oh my god that hurt.”  

Above him, Sam breathed in relief, as did the collection of bodies around them, and helped Blaine sit up.  

“I think we either found something electrical - which means the room isn’t alive, or they’ve been watching us and didn’t like what we were finding and zapped me.”  Blaine groaned, reaching up to rub his hair and finding it extra poofy courtesy of the electrical shock.  “God… Kurt hates it when my hair gets this terrible…”

His heart ached as he thought about his man and he stopped talking once he caught himself doing it.  If he wanted to get back to Kurt, he had to think past this, move past this.  A little zap - no problem.  Just a bump in the road to freedom.

He hoped.

Not a moment later there was a deep purple glow in front of him and Sam, and the hairy Other was in the center of the room, spitting out something in that terrible language of theirs at Blaine.  Was he giving him a scolding?  Telling him something?  Asking a question?  DId these creatures not realize just how useless it was to talk to humans that didn’t understand them at all?

“Something about moving… and something about circles again…” Jeff offered.  Like knowing things about moving circles made the whole exchange less confusing.  

Another purple glow formed beside the Other in the room, and a new Other was there.  A woman, shorter than the Others they had been interrogated by but still taller than even Karofsky, ears pointed, but not as extreme as a pure Other.

“A halfling…”  Jeff breathed out, and then caught his breath in his mouth.  Blaine kept looking the girl over.  White hair, bound in a long braid that fell down to the middle of her back, and dressed in black, metallic armor.  He’d only seen the child halflings… but it was true she didn’t look quite enough like all the Others Blaine had seen before.

“Yes.  That’s your word for us.”  She spoke in flawless english, looking over the group with clear disappointment.  “Go Bruno.  I’ll be fine.”

The hairy Other grunted beside her, but faded out in another shimmer of purple, leaving her here, alone, among so many humans and clearly not worried for her own safety.  It told Blaine she was more dangerous than she looked.

Left by herself, she directed her gaze to Blaine.  “Do not toy with this structure.  It is designed to collapse if broken and kill you all in its wake.”

Blaine wrinkled up his nose at her, pushing himself up to stand despite the ache that still resonated through his body.  “Sounds like something someone would say because they’re worried that we found a way out and they’re trying to scare us into not pushing further.”

“I have no interest in keeping you.”  She said plainly.  “They do.  That’s why they spoke to you first and not me.”

“Why witch?  Why talk to us now then?” Santana spat, coming up aside Blaine.

Blaine noticed then the violet eyes set in the Halfling’s face as she looked over to regard Santana with equal disinterest.  “The Ilu asked me to.  The white-eyed one.”

“So… you can speak English… but they they only now asked you talk to us.  Brilliant.  How was it that your race took over the world again witch?”  Santana growled, Blaine having to set a hand on her back to warn her to stay with him.  She seemed dangerously close to rushing the Halfling and Blaine was pretty sure that Santana would find herself outmatched.

The Halfling ignored Santana’s spiteful rant and looked back to Blaine.  “What is the source of power you came from?”

Blaine shook his head while Jeff murmured at his other side, “I was right.  They were talking about power!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There’s a circle of protection we can not enter.  All of you left it and that is why we were able to capture you.  They want to know what the source is.”

Blaine blinked a few times, digging through his mind to try and figure it out and looking over to the rest of the community for help.  All of them shaking their heads, shrugging, or both.  “I don’t think we know what you’re looking for…”

“Then you’re all useless to us and they should have let me kill you.” The Halfling huffed.

Mouths snapped shut and looks were exchanged.  Santana was the one who dared say anything.

“You?  Just you?  You’re a Halfing… doesn’t that mean you’re only half as strong?!”

Blaine and Jeff were the ones who winced as she said it, knowing, if only from the rumours, how wrong she was.  There was a flash beside Blaine then, and a gasp.  Heads turned to look at the wall where the Halfling woman had Santana pinned by her throat with one of the long, silver fingered, hands of the woman.  “Halflings are the reason there is power at all… witch.”

Santana was released then, slumping down to the floor and gasping for her own breath as her hands went to feel her neck.  A couple of the members of the community went to her aid while the Halfling woman spun in place with a flourish and looked the rest of them over.  “You are all on borrowed time.  As soon as they realize how useless you are to them, you’ll be dead.  Make your peace now.”

Purple swarmed over the woman, overtaking her, and teleporting her out of sight once again, leaving in her wake, Santana’s choked breathes, and a silence that only the dead could appreciate.

“Lift me up again Sam.”  Blaine said finally, looking over at his friend.  “We either get out or die trying because it seems the alternative is just waiting for her to come back.”

Sam nodded, and soon there were several community members feeling around at holes in the ceiling, trying to push into those corners until they were electrocuted off - but each time, they got back up, and went at it again.

They had nothing to lose.

  
  
  



	25. Chapter 23: Brought to Light

The room was filled with the scent of singed hair and sweat.  Everyone was taking a break from their attempts to short-circuit or break out of the room that had held them all for far too long - no matter if that time had been days or months.  

Sam and Blaine sat back to back, trying to rest, relax, and let their bodies heal.  Blaine’s hair was particularly bad.  It was poofy on a good day, and now, well it just looked like he was trying to imitate Marge Simpson’s beehive.  Even his beard was sticking out like a mountain man’s.

“I figured it might be time for a haircut…”  Santana mused across from him where she sat against the wall, fingering her own hair and looking at the ends which had gone from brown and soft to black and jagged.  

“You’d look good with any cut.”  Blaine said, trying to be supportive.

She snorted, “Like you’d know.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Blaine groaned, shifting as he felt Sam fall asleep against his back and his whole weight pushed against Blaine’s back.

“It means the only thing you think looks good is a certain halfling boy in the community who’s watching my son…”

“Kurt’s not a halfling.”

“They’re looking for a source of power that’s somewhere in the community Blaine.  Open your eyes.  Kurt’s the only thing that’s even remotely magical there.” Santana grumbled, letting her hair fall as she lifted her eyes to look at Blaine directly.

“He’s not a halfling.”  Blaine again stated flatly.

“Well he’s not exactly normal is he?”  Santana huffed.  “Face it Bird boy.  Your boyfriend is what they’re looking for.”

Blaine shook his head.  Kurt had the most human heart of anyone he’d ever met.  He wasn’t an Other.  Sure, there was something… unique about him, but he wasn’t one of the creatures responsible for the massacre of millions… if not billions of humans.

“He did come back from the dead….”  Karofsky said quietly from where he was sitting not far away, not bothering to look up as he noted it.

“And everyone saw how he took down your old gang….” Azimio added from beside Karofsky.

Blaine again just shook his head.  “He’s not a halfling.  He’s just… really amazing.”

That made Santana, Karofsky, and Azimio all snort with laughter - why though, Blaine couldn’t figure out.  He was being sincere.  Did it come out like he was joking?  Or did they think the idea of Kurt being amazing was just that funny?

“You are such a lovestruck puppy dog Blaine… after what… three years… STILL!”  Santana laughed and tipped her head back, the rest of the small group around them joining in.

He blinked a few times, looking around questioningly, “What?  Is that… so bad?”

“No… no…”  She gasped through her chuckles, “It’s just… you are so blind to what should be obvious.  He’s it.  He’s the center of the power circle.  There’s no other explanation.  It makes the most sense.”

“It’s why no one complains about having a halfling in town Blaine…”  Karofsky spoke up with a shrug of his shoulders, “... he might be one of their kind… but for whatever reason… he protects us and has kept us hidden from them… and safe.”

“He’s not -” Blaine started again, but a wavering purple form in the center of all of them had him clamp his mouth shut and nudge Sam awake behind him as the Halfling woman came into focus between them all.

“Why is it moving?!”  She snapped, looking directly at Blaine.

“What?”  He glanced around, trying to figure out what she was talking about when she elaborated.

“The circle.  It’s moving.  Explain.”

“I… don’t know?” Blaine said quietly, brows arching and looking past the woman to Santana whose own eyebrows had shot up.

She spun around then, facing Santana next, “You.  You said it was something called Kurt.  Explain.”

So they could hear them inside here, and they were listening.  Blaine bit his lower lip and tried to make eye contact with Santana, pleading for her to not reveal too much.  Whether or not Kurt was the source of power, Blaine didn’t want any harm to come to him.

“I… ah… it’s what we’ve always called it… we don’t know what it was… but we gave the protective… shield?  We gave it the name Kurt?”  Her eyes flicked between the woman and Blaine as she tried to come up with a lie on the spot, and Blaine just hoped the woman bought it.

“It’s moving here.  It’s coming this way!”  The Halfling snapped, reaching for the sword sheathed at her side, “Someone WILL explain it!”

Blaine’s face went red, and he looked around as everyone else did the same, looking from person to person, trying to read each other’s faces to determine what, if anything, they should say.  If this Halfling was threatening them for information, was there any point in giving it?  She had already said she thought they should have been killed instead of kept - giving her information wouldn’t save them from her.

Apparently everyone else was thinking along the same lines because they stayed quiet, nibbling their lower lips or just pressing their lips into tight little lines as a physical show that they wouldn’t speak.  

“Fine!”  She wavered into purple again, disappearing from sight and a collective sigh of relief was let loose from the group.

“What do you think it means?” Karofsky asked in a whisper, as if they wouldn’t be able to hear it with whatever they were using to listen in.

“Kurt must be coming here…” Santana said, looking directly at Blaine.

Blaine shook his head, “No… he can’t… he has… Eugene and the girls… and Isaac…”

“There are other people who could watch them…” Sam said quietly, referring to Mercedes.

Panic set into Blaine’s heart, to the point where he was sure everyone could hear his heart beating rapidly.  What if it was Kurt?  If he came here… Sure he had fought off the Warblers, but they were just human.  He couldn’t go up against Others with their magic and technology.  He didn’t stand a chance.  He’d end up in this tiny room just like the rest of them and Blaine’s attempt to rescue everyone really would have been for nothing - even more than it already was.

“If Kurt moves though… that’ll leave the community unprotected…”  Azimio hissed, “Damn man… I got’s a baby on the way.  I may not exactly like Kurt, but I’d rather he was there than wasn’t!”

Blaine again shook his head, “What if it’s someone else though?  Or something else?”

Everyone looked at him then like he was an idiot.  Dead serious stares and head shakes like he was missing out on what should be obvious.

“Let’s just work on trying to get out of this thing…”  Blaine suggested then, getting nods in return which alleviated the feeling that he was missing something so obvious.  At least if he was getting zapped as he poked around the ceiling he wouldn’t feel like a complete idiot.

Of course, that was a matter of perspective.

They kept at it, every now and then someone getting launched off another person’s shoulders.  Shoes were taken off feet to prod at the spaces that seemed particularly sensitive, and they too were launched across the room once they hit whatever that electrical source was.  

“I don’t think we’re getting any further with this.”  Santana stammered as she picked herself up off the ground after getting shocked again, her hair floating around her like a brown and black cloud.  

“Well what else can we do?” Blaine grunted as he wiggled his fingers in between the space where the wall met the ceiling.  “Wait for death?”

“Instead of giving myself a heart attack by doing this?  Yeah.  Maybe.”

Purple lights shone down the center of the room and everyone paused and turned to look towards the three figures that came into being - the hairy shapeshifter, the white-eyed Other, and the Halfling woman.

“It continues to move closer.  Once this location is covered by its radius, this room will cease to function.  You need to tell us now - what is it?”  The Halfling yelled, looking at everyone and seemingly unconcerned about those that had their fingers in the wall spaces.

“Why on earth would we tell you anything if it means that we’d be freed?” Santana spoke up, stepping over and in front of the Halfling, dark eyes glaring at violet ones.

The Halfling woman’s eyes narrowed into slits, and Blaine gulped.  Everything about her spoke danger, and it was as if he could see the rage floating around her.  She was not impressed by Santana’s sudden burst of confidence.

“Fine.  Then we move you to a less magically inclined prison.  Only…”  The Halfling looked up and around the room, a smirk covering her sharply defined facial features.  “... we don’t have enough chains for this many…. Ilu!”  She looked back at the white eyed one.  “Freeze them all and show me which ones have stronger attachment to the power source by their aura!”

Bodies froze, Blaine could only move his eyes which flitted around in panic as he saw glows of different colours and intensities forming on the bodies of his friends and colleagues - though once his own glow formed, he was nearly blinded by how strong it was.

Though not so blind as to avoid seeing what came next.

The Halfling unsheathed her sword, and then, with no more preamble, spun her blade and began slaughtering those whose aura’s were lighter and weaker.  They weren’t able to fight back.  They couldn’t even yell as her blade sliced through them and any colour they had around them faded to nothing and their frozen bodies fell to the ground, forever unmoving now.

“Plenty of specimens for you to study now Ilu….”  The Halfling mused as she stepped back towards her kin, licking over her lips and grinning smugly.  “Chain the rest Bruno.  We’ll take them topside.  It might be useful to have them after all if the power source comes close.”

Those that remained had chains clasped around their arms and legs by the hairy one, Bruno, while the white eyed one shuffled around the room to the bodies of those deemed unworthy of being alive and teleported them away.  Once they were all in chains, and the bodies gone, the Ilu pulled the bodies of the living close to himself and the Others, and the room reformed around them into a sphere which seemed to shift around them even though they still couldn’t move.

Blaine couldn’t speak still, but he could see his friends… Sam had been left, Santana, Karofsky, Jeff…. a few others… but there was only half as many of them left alive now, and all shared the same wide eyed, tear rimmed eyes.

Eyes that begged the question - how could this be happening?

There was a splash, and suddenly the glow of the room was replaced by that of the sun which shone through the now translucent sphere which looked down over a large lake below them from which they had emerged from.  They had been underwater.  How deep though?  If they had somehow managed to make the room cease functioning, would they have been so deep they would have drowned?

The sphere moved towards a pier where an old, abandoned restaurant stood.  They set down and the sphere disappeared, just like it had never existed in the first place, and one-by one, Bruno grabbed them like they were feathers and chained them to parking posts before the white-eyed one finally released his hold over their bodies.

Santana let out a cry then, tears falling freely now as she snapped her head back and looked at the Halfling, “You didn’t have to kill them!”

Karofsky just kept shaking his head, mouth moving but no words coming from it as he stared at the ground while Sam just kept murmuring the names of those that had been slain and biting down on his lower lip until blood was drawn which dripped down with a little pitter-pat onto the concrete below them.

Jeff just stared.

“I told you.  Not enough chains.”  The Halfling said with all too much pleasure in her voice as she stepped around them.  “Besides, may as well keep the ones with the strongest attachment to the source of power.  Most of those that are now bodies only had no trace of the source of them….”

Santana looked towards Blaine then, and to his shock, started snapping at him, “Tell me again how it’s not Kurt!  We’re the ones out of that whole group closest to him and we’re the ones still alive!  Your glow was the strongest of all of us! Tell me!  Tell me how we’re alive and not them!”

Blaine just let his jaw go slack and shook his head at her, eyes staring blankly at the latino woman who struggled against her bonds, pulling her arms back as she cried openly, grieving for her friends she had just lost and crying out for Brittany before letting her head fall into her hands and her hands falling to the pavement as she sobbed into the ground.

Not far behind her, the Halfling chuckled.  Her face so full of pride that the human side showed.  Blaine turned his vacant stare towards her and glared.  “What are you so scared of?  Why is this power source so important?  Your kind has already destroyed most of humanity - what’s a few more holdouts?”

The chuckling ended as she looked back at Blaine, face growing cold once more as she regarded him indifferently.  “You presume we care about what’s left of your race.  We don’t.  We just want the power for ourselves.  Humans can’t be trusted with it.”

“We don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about though!  How can you assume we have any sort of control over it?!”

She smirked, thin pink lips curling up villainously, “Like your friend said - you had the brightest glow of all.  You tell me how you don’t have control over it?”

His lips smacked shut and he just continued to glare at her, at a loss for a response aside from directly his anger towards her.  No matter what they thought, Kurt was not a monster like them.

Not even a little bit.

The white-eyed one, the one the Halfling called an Ilu, rattled off something in their language towards the Halfling woman and the Halfling nodded in turn, looking towards the hairy Other and speaking, “Watch them.  We’re going to do some tests…”

So they were left with the massive, hairy giant who seemed to only have an interest in wearing tiny pants - which, given what Blaine had seen of other shapeshifters, was lucky.  Most he had seen were perfectly alright with walking around in the nude and it was a complete distraction for even the most anti-Other straight renegade males when a female shifter came into sight.  They were only human after all, and breasts were breasts.

Time passed, and Blaine looked up towards the sky as the stars came out, speaking over to Jeff, “Do you think you can chart where we are…?”

“Way ahead of you man…”  Jeff mumbled back, muttering different star names and constellations to himself as he looked around and did his work.  Jeff was something of a savant when it came to navigation.

Santana had cried herself to sleep on the pavement, while Sam and the others seemed to have gone completely mute after the massacre in the room, just staring at the ground.  Blaine wasn’t going to let it get to him though, at least not here, at least not now.  He would get back to Kurt.  He would make sure he stayed safe.

“Northwest of home.  Directly north of where we were captured.”  Jeff finally whispered over, even though the hairy hulk didn’t seem interested in what they were saying as he stared off towards the lake.  “If the radius of Kurt… er… the power source is similar to the distance between the community and where we were caught, then we’re about a half day away from the edge of that circle by horseback.”

Blaine nodded to himself.  Get free, then make a dash southeast.  Good to know.   Get back to the safety of whatever it was that was protecting them all.   Get back to Kurt.

He just needed to figure out how to break free of the chains binding him to the post by his wrists and ankles.  There had to be a way.  

“It’s old bronze…”  Jeff muttered and Blaine turned his head to look at his blonde haired friend who was examining the chains that bound him.  “.... like… really old.”

“Does that… help us somehow?”  Blaine asked, one brow perking up as he finally looked down at the bindings around him, noting the intricate patterns in the bands.

“Not even a little…”  Jeff sighed and looked towards Blaine, “... I just thought it was unusual…. it’s old so you’d think it would have been made from iron, but it’s bronze… thankfully not arsenic bronze… but still… huh.”

Blaine cringed at the word arsenic, even though Jeff had noted it wasn’t in the metal holding him in place.

“What about the markings on it?”  Blaine asked, seeing if he could keep his friend’s mind active and focused.

Jeff shook his head as he looked to it, “Not an art guy Blaine… don’t know about that.  Best guess?  Just decorative.”

“Why decorate something used to hold your enemies?”  Blaine huffed, trying to sit himself down in a way that was comfortable.  He almost missed the white room given how much less giving the pavement was up on the surface.

“Don’t ask me man… I’m not the one shacked up with an Other.”

Blaine’s lips pressed together as he cast his eyes back up towards Jeff who was looking at him just as intently.  “You blame him for this too.”

“I don’t blame anyone.  I’m just mad and I don’t have anywhere to direct it aside from those things right now.”

“It’s not Kurt’s fault.”  Blaine snapped.

“If he didn’t exist then they wouldn’t be out here looking for him and killing people!”

“If he even IS the source of power they’re looking for, then he’s what’s kept EVERYONE from being killed there.”

They both breathed heavily, staring at one another for awhile before turning their heads away in a mutual acceptance that this was neither the time nor place for a spitting match.  No doubt it would only amuse their captors and exhaust them, taking away their focus from getting free.

Not that Blaine had any idea how to go about that.

The sky became darker, lit only by stars and a small green line of northern lights, and his fellow captives all seemed to accept their state for the moment, falling asleep one by one.  Blaine tried to keep his eyes open.  The ground was too unforgiving, too cold, too uncomfortable to fall asleep on he told himself.  He couldn’t allow himself any time for sleep that would be better spent trying to find a nonexistent memory of how to escape from bronze shackles and chains. 

He somehow fell asleep anyhow.

Hours later, with the dawn trying to pry past his eyelids and his cheek screaming at him for being crushed against the pavement, Blaine awoke.  He forced his body back to sitting from where it had slumped itself over on the ground, and rubbed off the gravel bits from where they had stuck to the side of his arm and face, wincing at the numbness that radiated in the parts of him that weren’t just plain aching.  

Most of the others were in the same state of waking - brushing off dirt and pebbles, rubbing their eyes, and looking vacantly out towards the lake where they had seen their comrades killed before their eyes the night before.  No greetings were shared, and no words spoken.  It was as if most of them had accepted their fate now that they had seen what the Others were capable of.  Something they had all been powerless to stop or even anticipate.  How could they fight against creatures that had the power to puppeteer their bodies?

The shapeshifter was no where in sight when Blaine looked around, at least, the first time he looked around.  A closer inspection towards the horizon where a nearby forest grew aside the lake revealed a wolf chasing after a rabbit, except the wolf was a good ten times the size of a normal canine.  He wasn’t a bear, he was a wolf - brown and dark in color. 

“Is that…?” Karofsky asked, catching sight of the same scene Blaine’s eyes were locked onto.

“Yeah.  The shifter.”

“His jaws look bigger than my head….”

Blaine just nodded, watching the wolf make the final tackle that ended the escape of the rabbit and tear its head off with one savage movement of its jaws, consuming it in a bloody mess before all their eyes.

He wasn’t just eating.  He was showing them just how dangerous he was to cross.

Blood covering his maw and rabbit decimated, his form pulled backwards, morphing piece by piece back into that of an Other, though with the blood still trailing from his lips down to his chest and below, where his small pants seem to have been destroyed at some point.  

He grinned as he walked past them, back to where he had been standing watch the night before - not even bothering to cover up or wipe the blood from his body.  The smug, toothy grin on his face told them all he was pleased with his kill, and they should know it.

The Halfling woman made her appearance not long after, glancing towards the hairy beast for half a breath, arching a brow, and then looking upon her captives.  “We are in the circle.”

Blaine looked down to his bindings, tugging on them gently and finding no give.  In the circle of protection or not, it didn’t seem to affect the bronze fixed around his wrists or ankles.  

“He’ll kill you… he’ll kill you.  We saw him kill a whole group after coming back from the dead…”  Santana said, voice wrecked from her sobbing the night before.  She didn’t say it to spite the Halfling this time though.  She was saying it as a matter of fact.  

“He’s not -”  Blaine once again started, and then stopped as the Halfling spoke over him.

“Oh really?  So it is a person and not an object.  Good to know.”

Santana just repeated herself, and Blaine frowned as he watched her stare vacantly towards the ground - so close to losing herself to madness.  “He’ll kill you…”

“Well I guess we’ll find out soon enough.  It’s been moving constantly towards this point at about… 60 miles per hour or 100 kilometers per hour… depending on whatever measurement system you humans use….”

Jeff twitched a little and, outburst from the night before temporarily forgotten, turned to Blaine to whisper, “That’s too fast for a horse… especially moving constantly….”

“Well I know you humans don’t have any dragon-kind on the surface, so your power source must also have some force of speed….” The Halfling stated simply, whispers clearly within her capacity to hear.

“Dragons… of course you’d have dragons….” Karofsky mumbled to himself, otherwise ignored by everyone else.

“Quads…”  Jeff said then, again turning his attention back to Blaine, “We had the quads all stored up near our Warbler house… Kurt…  he got the Bluebird running not too long ago…”

Blaine looked away, staring at the ground.  Again and again, all signs pointed to Kurt.  He wanted to argue.  He wanted to tell them all they were wrong… so wrong… but he found himself at a loss for arguments against it when more and more the evidence piled up against Kurt.  Kurt was unique, Kurt was special… Kurt… 

Kurt was something, and it didn’t matter what, because Blaine would still love him.

“How long until it gets here at that speed Jeff…?”  Blaine weakly queried, not bothering to look away from the dull grey of the pavement, cracked with inattention, weather, and age.

Jeff was quiet a moment, no doubt checking the position of the sun, and then mumbling to himself as he calculated things.  “About an hour…?”

Blaine sighed and looked up, towards the grass where there was still pieces of decapitated rabbit strewn about.  “An hour.”

The thought occurred to Blaine to suggest Jeff be put in charge of all things mathematical when they returned to the community…. IF they returned, because as Blaine counted in his head, and reached three thousand six hundred seconds, he noticed the Halfling pull her blade out and watched as the hairy Other shifted back into his wolf form while the white-eyed Other stood back behind them and lifted its hands as it prepared to cast some spell.  

They could see something… or sense it.

In the distance, there was a hum, a motor coming close, and then the Bluebird quad drove past, barren of a rider, and drove right into the lake where it sputtered and choked before it accepted its death.  The Others were only temporarily distracted by the sight, each looking their own way much the same the captives were, looking for the source of the commotion.

Then there was a bark, and all heads turned towards the building where a shadow peaked out from behind the edge of the structure.

“Pudding?!” Blaine sputtered as the black lab looked around, growling immediately at the sight of Others and tensing her lithe body.

“A dog?”  The Halfling snorted, lifting her sword and taking a step towards the bitch.  “This was all we were concerned over?”

“Pudding can’t drive Blaine… right… can she…?”  Jeff asked, leaning over to whisper with nothing short of disbelief as his eyes locked onto the dog just as everyone else’s were.

“I… I don’t think so?”

They all watched, Blaine and his people just letting their jaws go slack at the most unexpected reveal, Blaine also now concerned for his dog - who the Halfling was advancing upon slowly, yelling back at the other two Others to, “Freeze it dammit!”

The white-eyed one said something in their tongue that made the Halfling growl audibly as she continued to advance, and as Pudding continued to growl and back up inch by inch, Blaine was guessing that whatever the power source did - it canceled out any powers the white-eyed one had, which meant Pudding couldn’t be frozen by magic.

Which meant she had a chance to get away.

“Run Pudding!” Blaine yelled, pulling himself towards her as much as he could with being bound to the post.  It was bad enough the Others had no problem killing his kin from the community, Blaine didn’t want to see his dog killed as well.

Loyal as ever, Pudding made a bark of acknowledgement to Blaine and then turned and ran, the Halfling chasing after her with sword drawn towards the forest.

“The damned dog was it the whole time…?”  Santana muttered, shaking her head.

Blaine shook his head too, “I… how could I know… I mean….”

There was a ‘swwfftt’ of air and a gasping groan behind him that silenced Blaine’s thought process.  As he turned he saw the large, hairy other snarling and grabbing at a stick embedded in his chest, blood dribbling out from around the edges where his skin had been punctured.  The white-eyed one yelling and pointing up towards the roof as an arrow flew through Blaine’s line of sight and hit the shifter once more in the other side of his chest.  The beast was so dense though he barely flinched from the attack, instead growling and looking up to the roof and towards his attacker.

“Kurt….” Blaine mouthed, his whole body weakening at the sight of his lover taking aim once again at the animal that wouldn’t fall for his arrows, and instead advanced on the building while the white-eyed Other flailed its arms and babbled in its language.

“It was him….” Jeff murmured, hazarding a glance towards Blaine who just watched in stunned silence, silently praying for Kurt to leave, run, disappear - anything that would get him out of harm’s way.

But Kurt stayed, shooting arrow after arrow into the beast until it had climbed to the roof with its large, clawed hands, and Kurt found himself without any arrows left in his pack.  They all watched as Kurt went hand to hand then, fighting and kicking at the monster in front of him without hesitation, but with no advantage.

And when Kurt was knocked down from the building by one swift hit from the hairy monster, Blaine could only cry out his name and then watch while, for the second time in his memory, Kurt stopped moving as he hit the ground.

  
  
  



	26. Chapter 24: Drowning

Blaine strained against his bonds until they cut into his skin and stretched it until it tore apart millimeter by millimeter, eyes glued to the hairy Other who jumped down easily after Kurt and scooped him up into his massive arms with equal ease.  The white-eyed Other babbled in their language towards his compatriot, who merely grunted in response as he carried Kurt’s limp form over to the posts and dropped him there unceremoniously.

“Kurt… Kurt… please…”  Blaine begged, ignoring the dark red that was pooling over the edges of his shackles as he pulled his body as close as he could.  Relief consumed him with a tremble when he saw Kurt was breathing still, and Blaine’s body went lax as he saw that no bones were sticking out at odd angles, nor was there any massive blood stains.  

A set of shackles was brought out of the old restaurant, once known as the ‘Lakeside Grill’ according to the weathered sign hanging over the entrance, by the hairy one who chained Kurt to his own post not too far from Blaine, but still too far for him to touch Kurt.  All Blaine wanted to do was pull Kurt into his arms, kiss him, apologize, and tell him he didn’t care what he was.  He just wanted him safe.

But this situation was far from safe.

The Halfling returned, spinning the shaft of her blade and flicking spots of red in a patterned splatter that fell along the pavement and even up into her shockingly white hair.  It was then that Blaine remembered Pudding, and how she had led off the half-blooded woman so Kurt could try and deal with the other two.  

“Human domesticated dogs… so simple minded.  Like their creators.”  She mocked, kneeling over Kurt’s fallen form and toeing her boot to nudge him him in the side.  Between realising that the woman had killed his dog, and that she was now able to touch more of Kurt than he was, Blaine’s rage was elevated higher than it had ever been before.

“Get the hell away from him!”

Violet eyes snapped onto Blaine and the Halfling smirked.  “Is this why your aura was the strongest?  He’s your match?”  She again nudged Kurt with her toe, though her eyes were stuck to Blaine awaiting his reaction.

“Yes!  YES!”  Blaine cried, willing to agree to anything if it meant he could somehow help Kurt.  He was pulling against the chains that held him in place once more and his hands were numb from his earlier tugging, so it was easier to force himself ahead even though there was still only much give his body would allow for.  “Let him go!  Leave him alone!”

She laughed.  It wasn’t hearty or calming, but dark and diminishing.  So hollow in its sound that it made Blaine’s heart go weak in anticipation of what was to come next.  “He was your power source?”  Again she nudged her boot against him with a dismissive snort.  “Pathetic.”

“He’s a Halfling? Really?”  Jeff asked quietly, reminding Blaine that it wasn’t just him, Kurt, and that bitch in his realm of existence.

“Well obviously.” Santana huffed.

“He stinks of human.”  The Halfling asserted and wandered back towards her Other friends.  “He’s definitely not on par with me.”

It wasn’t the relief Blaine had hoped for when she said it.  In this moment, he wished Kurt was a Halfling - if only to be able to have a chance at fighting back and being able to save himself.  Blaine knew he didn’t have a shot if he was merely a human.

“Sorry about your dog man.” Sam said softly when the Others and the Halfling busied themselves with discussion off to the side, glancing over at their captives, Kurt in particular, from time to time.  

Blaine shook his head, tears he didn’t even know he had being slung off his his face to the ground with the motion.  “I… I don’t want to think about it now… thanks Sam.”  

“You should probably give your wrists a break though…. your hands are turning blue.”

Blaine looked down at himself, seeing it for himself.  His hands, so numb, were a tye dye of blue and purple while the top of his wrist was red, crusting over with dried blood that mixed with fresh blood creeping over the bronze.  “I… I need to get to him.”

A groan caught all their attention then as Kurt shifted and drew a hand up to his head, waking quickly when he realized his hand was bound and he was in unfamiliar territory.  

“Kurt!”

His lover’s eyes snapped Blaine’s way as Kurt sat up and tugged experimentally at the shackles holding him in place, “Fuck… fuck!”

The Halfling only looked over for a moment when Kurt’s voice rose up before turning back to her conversation.  Clearly they weren’t worried about his waking.  

Like Blaine, Kurt tugged and fought against his restraints, swearing up a storm as he did and looking in all directions as he familiarized himself with his location.  

“Where’s the dog?”

Blaine bit his lower lip and dropped his head down.  Sam supplied Kurt with the answer.

“White haired halfling killed her.”

That sent Kurt into a flurry of new curses and insults - some of which Blaine didn’t even know and must have been learned from the locals given that they had both established they had come from the same general location growing up.  

When Kurt had calmed down, or as calm as he ever got, chest heaving up and down and mouth open as he breathed deeply, Blaine hazarded speaking.

“Why’d you come after me?  You needed to watch the kids -”

“Mad at you.  Not talking to your dumb ass.”

Blaine snapped his mouth shut, ignoring the snickers behind him from his friends as he kept his gaze on Kurt who was glaring at the pavement.  If looks could kill, that pavement in front of him would have melted already.

“I’m sorry… I wanted to help.”

“Well you didn’t!” Kurt spat, turning to look back to Blaine, fire ablaze in his eyes.  “You left me to play house husband while you ran off to save the fucking world!  You didn’t consult me at all!  Mercedes knew that Sam was going, but you couldn’t even be bothered to tell me save for a crappy ass letter!  You asshole!”

Blaine wished he could shrink into himself, or at least maneuver himself enough to hide behind something.  Kurt was a terror to cross, he knew it, and that’s why he thought it was better to ask forgiveness than permission when he planned this escapade.  Of course, that was when Blaine thought he would be coming back with all their missing people.  

“Uh… guys… maybe this could wait until -”  Sam started, but clammed up the instant Kurt’s eyes set on him, just as infuriated.

“And you!  You’re in my house everyday!  I watch your girls!  You didn’t think you could let it slip that my dumbass husband was going on a suicide mission?  Why the hell are you here anyhow Sam?!  You have a wife and two daughters to think about!  At least Blaine doesn’t have kids to account to!  You’re an even bigger asshole!”

“I… ah… er…” 

Sam was never very good at dealing with Kurt when he was furious.

“Leave Sam alone Kurt… please… you’re mad at me… you’re mad that your plan… whatever it was… didn’t work…  Sam left with Mercedes blessing.”  

Stormy blue eyes were cast back onto Blaine, still beautiful despite all the ire within them, “Your damn dog wouldn’t stop following me when I left either!  Now she’s dead too because of your idiotic run.”

Blaine gulped as the guilt swarmed over him.  Brittany, the people the Halfling killed, Pudding… would there be any end to things he was at fault for?  “You had the quad… you could have outrun her… she would have gotten tired eventually.”

“Yeah.  Except she didn’t.  She kept going.  Everytime I stopped to piss she caught up.  Finally gave up and put her on the damned thing with me halfway here.”

“How’d you even know where to go?”

Kurt blinked a few times, face softening as Blaine watched him access his memories.  

“I just… guessed.  I don’t know…”

“Yet you’re not a Halfling?” Santana grumbled, “Well you’re certainly not normal - though that was already decided awhile ago.”

Kurt looked over at the latino girl, and as his eyes widened, Blaine saw Kurt recognize that, on a miniscule level, Blaine’s rescue mission had been a success.  Kurt hadn’t noticed anyone beyond Blaine and Sam up until that point, too engrossed in being angry.

“You’re alive…”

“Yeah.  Alive and chained to a post.”

Kurt looked over the rest of the community members that were there, counting them off under his breath, “What about… -”

“She killed half of them.”

Kurt swallowed deeply, looking back towards the tall threesome of overpowered creatures.  “Why?  What do they have to gain by killing more of us?”

“You.” Santana spat.

“What?”

Blaine sighed, again pulling against his restraints as he tried to get closer to Kurt.  “They think that you’re, maybe, some kind of power source that’s prevented them from getting to the community…”

“I… don’t understand…”  Kurt looked from Blaine to the other captives, eyes flickering with question.

“Yeah.  ‘cause we do.”  Santana grumbled with no shortage of sarcasm.

“Blaine.  Explain.”

Blaine frowned, looking, as he constantly was, at Kurt and trying to determine how to explain to him that those creatures thought he had some special power to protect and keep them away.  He scarcely understood it himself.

“They think you’re a source of power… somehow there’s a radius around you that you keep safe the people within it… and keep them out.”

“But they’re in it now…” Kurt mused, glancing back at them and then back to Blaine.  “How the hell would I do that anyhow?”

Blaine shrugged, “I don’t get it… but… I think there is maybe something to it.  They did this thing where they made us all glow based on the strength of our connection with the power source and I… well I glowed the most, and the one’s they didn’t kill….”  He looked back towards what was left of the group.  “It’s all people that you have relationships with to some degree.  Everyone they killed are people that have been… snubbing you.”

“That doesn’t mean anything…”  Kurt huffed, leaning back against the pole as he sat.  Blaine could see by the way Kurt’s head tipped back and his eyes shut that he was trying to process the information he was getting.  God, he knew Kurt, and he knew that this knowledge couldn’t be easy for him to take in.  He didn’t want the responsibility of their deaths on him - even if it was because they had chosen to alienate him and whatever protection he offered.

“They said the power source was moving towards them… and then you came… and the creepy pale, bald one with white eyes wasn’t able to use it’s powers anymore when you got close.” Blaine continued, hoping Kurt might know why it was happening.  Maybe he had something on him that was really the source of power.  Maybe it was an object.  Maybe… just maybe, there was another explanation.

Kurt shook his head, “I don’t… it doesn’t make any sense….  I’m not doing anything to do that.”

“I know Kurt…”  Blaine said weakly.  He did.  He had never seen Kurt do anything more than what any other human did - aside from coming back from the dead and taking down a dozen bad apple Warblers….

“I am sorry about Pudding… I know… she was special to you.”  Kurt offered quietly, drawing in a breath.  His rage from before had subsided, though Blaine knew that he’d still be begging forgiveness when they got out of this mess.  If they did.  And if they did, he’d mourn Pudding then.  Grief wasn’t conducive to escaping.

They were quiet for a moment, just soaking in the information and letting their emotions settle.  Santana was the one to break the silence, asking the question she always did.

“How’s my Eugene and Brittany?”

“He’s a perfect angel.  She’s… doing better.” Kurt offered, not opening his eyes or moving as he supplied the answer.

“I wish you would’ve stayed and taken care of them…”

Kurt lifted his head back up then, opening his eyes to regard Santana, “I’d rather you do that.”

“But now… they’re unprotected…”

“You really think that’s because of me?”

Santana shrugged, Blaine just watching it all, “I don’t know… but I know we were happy and safe there.  I was stupid to leave.”

“It was my fault… I should have checked the supplies…”  Blaine countered.

“You’re all idiots.”  Kurt asserted, mouth snapping shut the instant he saw the threesome walk towards him.  

“Leave him alone.”  Blaine pleaded as the Halfling came close enough to hear him.

She ignored him, looking Kurt up and down and then looking to the side at the white-eyed one who babbled something to her.

“No.  I’m not.”

All eyes snapped onto Kurt - human and Other as he responded to the words being said in that foreign language.  Again the white-eyed one said something that sounded like gobbledygook to Blaine, and again Kurt answered.

“Yes.  Why?”

Blaine’s jaw dropped.  All reservations he had about Kurt being something less than special were completely gone as the exchange continued.  The white-eyed one would speak incoherently and Kurt would respond in plain English.  Back and forth like that for several minutes until the Halfling glanced back to Blaine and smirked.

“Looks like not killing you paid off after all.”

Blaine had no way to respond to that, letting his jaw hang as he watched the interaction continue until Kurt seemed to realize how all the community members eyes were trained on him and he stopped speaking with the white-eyed one to look to Blaine.  “What?”

“You can… understand them?”

Kurt blinked a few times, “Yes… You can’t?”

Blaine shook his head slowly.

Kurt was good at remaining reserved.  He could keep his body still and stoic and completely unresponsive to the insults shot at him in the community.  He could pretend to ignore hateful words with ease.  Blaine knew him though.  He knew that no matter what Kurt’s body language said - or didn’t say for that matter, that his eyes would betray him, and in this moment, his eyes were just as transparent as always.  He was obviously confused at first, and then the clouds lifted in his eyes and Blaine could see recognition.

“It’s innate.”

“What do you mean?”

Blaine watched as the Others just watched the exchange.  The Halfling wearing her amused smirk, the hairy one looking bored, and the white-eyed one watching with interest.  

“The language… it’s innate.  If you have Other blood, you understand it… no matter what language you happen to be speaking.”

“I don’t…”  Blaine began.

“I knew it!  I knew you were one of those creepy pointy eared bastards!”  Santana snapped, interrupting Blaine.

Again, Kurt was still, though his eyes clouded back over and Blaine could see the pain in them.  “I’m…”

“He can’t be.”  The Halfing assured them all.  “He’s clearly not a pure blood, and he is definitely not of my stock.  Somehow he’s a human that has accessed magic.  He will tell us how.”

The white-eyed one chipped in its two cents, even though Blaine couldn’t ascertain what that was.

“What was it asking you about?”

Kurt tipped his head just a little to the side as he looked to Blaine, “If I was a Halfling, if I understood their words, how I knew where they were, why I attacked them, what I knew about them, what I knew about the circle….”

“I knew I heard the word circle!”  Jeff piped up excitedly.

“Shut up.”  Several of them directed back to him.  This was not the time to celebrate knowing one word of their language - seeing as how it was innate anyhow.

“How do you have magic?” The Halfling asked then, glowering at Kurt as she stepped in front of him.

“I don’t.”  Kurt said stiffly, eyes set back on her, just as challenging.

Her sword was pulled out of its sheath, still stained by Pudding’s blood along the edge.  Blaine strained against his bindings to move closer, still unable to move any closer despite how much he wished it. 

“Try your answer again human.” She sneered, pointing the end of the blade an inch away from Kurt’s face.

Blaine watched the tiny twitches of Kurt’s brow, the way his pupils flitted inside his eyes.  He was playing chess.  Once a week, they would play chess together.  Blaine only occasionally beat Kurt - and it was because of dumb luck.  Kurt would look over the board when they played, with the same look he had on his face now.  He was considering possible moves, and the potential outcomes of those moves.  Each choice he made had a string of results that could follow from it, and he needed to be ready for each of them.  

When Blaine won, it was because he made a move that Kurt had always determined was “too stupid for anyone to make” because it seemed suicidal for the piece involved, and therefore Kurt hadn’t plotted out the trajectory of that move - opening himself up to an unplanned end.  He had gotten better about planning around those “dumb moves”, but he still didn’t understand why Blaine made them, often telling Blaine about the ways he could have better moved after the game was finished.

Blaine just never thought ahead that much.  He enjoyed the process of playing the game.  He didn’t understand how Kurt enjoyed it knowing what was going to happen.  The joy for Blaine was in the surprise.

“I don’t know.”  Kurt again said, drawing out each word with a breath.  Move made.

“Wrong answer.”

She stepped to Blaine then, and he held his breath as the blade was tucked under his chin and the cold metal pressed into the soft spot above his adam’s apple.  He tried not to react, tried to be brave, but he couldn’t help but hold his breath.  If he breathed too heavily, he was afraid of piercing expanding skin on the blade.

Again Kurt’s eyes belied calculations in his head, along with panic.

When the blade was pressed harder, it drew a wince out of Blaine as his skin was cut and a trickle of blood trailed down his neck.  All Kurt’s attempts at being thoughtful went out the window with that.  “My mother was a Halfling!” 

Everyone else’s eyes, Others included, stared at Kurt, who was now straining against his shackles as he tried to reach for Blaine.  The blade was removed and Blaine lifted a hand as he gasped for breath and pressed his fingers against the cut.  

“Impossible.  Halflings do not procreate.” She stated plainly, stepping back in front of Kurt even though he was now pulling against his bonds to try and get closer to Blaine and check on him.

“She did.”  Kurt insisted, still working on trying to maneuver to Blaine and swearing as he found himself unable to make the connection he wanted to.

There was a murmur between the Others and then the Halfling explained.  “Halflings, while powerful, do not breed.  We are like mules - the best of a horse and a donkey combined, but unable to create new life from within us.”

Kurt was more interested in getting to Blaine and less interested in the reasoning the Halfling was giving him as to why his answer was faulty in her mind. Blaine had drawn his hand back as the cut, smaller than he thought it was, clotted.  “It’s okay Kurt…”

“It’s not!”  Kurt stammered, looking back then at the Halfling, “I don’t care if it’s not possible.  That’s all I know, and I didn’t even know it until a few years ago!  Let him be!”

She snickered, and the fleeting toss of pupils in Kurt’s eyes told Blaine that he regretted showing his concern.  Now she knew exactly where Kurt’s weak point was and how to get the information from him.  “Quarterlings do not exist.  You will have to try again.”

More babbling from the white-eyed one, drawing the attention of both the Halfling and Kurt.  

“I don’t know dammit. ”  Kurt snapped in response to whatever had been said to him.  “I was shot, I had a vision of my mother… she told me she was a Halfling… then I woke up without any wounds.”

More indiscernible speaking, and then the white-eyed one went into the restaurant while the hairy one and the Halfling wandered off to speak quietly.

“I’m going to kill that bitch…” Kurt growled, chains clattering as he pulled again to try and get close to Blaine to inspect him.

“Get in line.”  Santana huffed.

“Don’t Kurt….”  Blaine nodded down to his wrists.  “They don’t give at all… you’ll just hurt yourself.”

“I don’t fucking care!  We need to get the fuck out of here!”

“Is that really what happened with the shooting?  With Sebastian?” Sam asked quietly.

“Yes.  Fuck.  Can we discuss it later?  I really don’t feel like dealing with my genealogy here and now.” 

“Oh I think we should have the discussion.”  Santana pitched in, sitting up and glaring towards Kurt.  “Because I don’t think that you should be going anywhere but six foot under if you’re really one of them.”

“Are you joking me Santana?”  Blaine snapped, twisting his head and flinching as he reopened the fresh cut with the movement.  “He’s clearly no friend of theirs!  And whatever power they think he has is what has protected you, Brittany, and Eugene!”

“But how far does that loyalty extend now that he’s in contact with his own kind?”  Karofsky spoke up for the first time in hours, brow furrowed.  He didn’t look as accusing as Santana was, but he was obviously concerned.

“They are not my own fucking kind!”  Kurt snapped.  “I grew up human!  I always thought I was human!  I fucking died and found out, surprise!, I’m only about seventy five percent human!  That’s still a shitload more than Other… and I don’t consider myself one of them for a second.”

“Well you don’t now… but what about later?  What about when you have questions?” Karofsky asked, still focused and thoughtful. 

Kurt wasn’t having it though.  “I don’t have fucking questions except for how the hell to get out of these things!  Are you people insane?  Are you really worried about me when those three are probably contemplating how to kill us?”

“You’re the one who understands what they’re saying.  Why don’t you tell us?” Santana hissed.

If it hadn’t been for the bonds, Blaine was sure they’d be at each other’s throats.

“This is ludicrous!  Calm the hell down.  Santana, Kurt saved your and Brittany’s life a few years back and he had made sure Eugene has been healthy and cared for while Brittany went loopy.  Karofsky, he saved your ass too - not to mention Kitty.” Blaine spit backwards.

“Well of course you’d stick up for him.”  Santana stated plainly with a roll of the eyes.  “I’m sure that Other blood in him gives him a tall dick.”

“Fuck off!”   
“Shut up!”

Both Blaine and Kurt snapped at Santana at the same time, both with eyes ablaze.  This was ridiculous, Blaine thought to himself, these people are insane.  Why did he bother to seek them out and try to bring them back to the community?  Kurt had never, ever, done anything but try and help them and all they did was find issue with him.  It shouldn’t matter what he was or wasn’t.  He was Kurt.  He protected them - purposefully or innately.

There was no continuation of the argument though, as the white-eyed one returned from within the building and held out the same token that had been directed to Blaine during his interrogation, complete with foreign words.

Kurt understood though.  He took the offered token and made a small wince and gritted his teeth when he did, letting the little thing fall to the ground.  Blaine saw why immediately.  A pin had ejected from the little device, pricking Kurt’s finger and drawing his blood over it.

“Fucking… fuck… fuckers….”  Kurt growled, cradling his pierced finger within the palm of his other hand.  “He just told me to take it so he could check out the authenticity of my story… Asshole.”

The white eyed one seemed unphased by Kurt’s duress, picking up the token and slipping it into a rectangular white box which began to light up as soon as the token was submerged into it.  There was a hum, then a light shone up and out of the box, like something Blaine had seen in those sci-fi movies he watched as a kid.  Within the light was a small image of a person.. an Other?  It wasn’t clear enough that he could tell from his vantage point.

“That’s… my mom..”  Kurt choked out when he saw it, and Blaine squinted at the projected three dimensional light figure.  It was a woman, tall and slim, with Halfling ears.  Still, she had Kurt’s colouring - or rather he had hers, and the same ever expressive blue-green eyes.

Kurt never spoke much, if at all about his mother.  She was only ever mentioned in passing and Blaine had always assumed it was because the memory was still too hard and too fresh in Kurt’s mind no matter how long ago it had been since she passed away.  Clearly though, there had been other reasons he didn’t speak her name.  

“Human name Elizabeth Hummel… Mmm.. called away as we all were twenty years past…”  The Halfling mused as she came up alongside the white-eyed one, reading what Blaine at first had thought was just distortion on the light image, but must have actually been some kind of written language. “Powers of temporal healing…. interesting…”

Kurt sighed and turned his head back down to the pavement, as if looking at the generated image was too hard.  Maybe it was.  Halfling or not, it was his mother, and even though Blaine couldn’t figure out how Kurt hadn’t realized that until a few years ago given how the image was so clearly of a Halfling, he still understood the pain of loss.  Everyone did.

“Temporal healing?  Isn’t that what… Wolverine has?” Sam perked up.

“No you dummy.”  Jeff huffed.  “Wolverine has regenerative powers.  Temporal healing is like… Raven right?”

“Fuck no.  Marvel all the way.”  Sam huffed back just as indignantly.

“No way!  DC!”

“Shut up both you idiots!  Comic books are totally irrelevant right now!” Blaine spit.  Really, he loved comics.  Everytime they’d do a run Blaine would happily stock up on comic books, claiming they were for the library even though they’d end up on the bedroom floor long before they made it to Trent.

The Halfling merely let her eyes jump from person to person, amusement stretched over her face as the tension that built from what appeared to her to be a simple concept.  “Temporal healing would explain this one coming back from the dead… and his existence in general… His mother could have effectively ‘healed’ whatever part of her was unable to bear children and thus this… Quarterling was born.”  As she said it, her nose turned up.  The Halfling certainly took issue with someone like Kurt existing.

“She called me her miracle…”  Kurt murmured quietly, looking out towards the lake absently.  

God, Blaine just wanted to be able to hold him.

“Should be fun to determine the limits of a Quarterling’s power’s though…”  

Blaine’s eyes snapped up towards the Halfling woman, eyebrows quirked together.  What did that mean?

He didn’t have to wait long to find out.  The hairy one lumbered forward swiped a claw over Kurt’s cheek suddenly.  There was no warning, no reasoning, just a few steps and then Kurt yelping out as his head whipped to the side with the motion and a spray of fresh blood splattered in front of him.  Whatever calm Blaine had managed to find was gone in a flash as he once again fought against his bounds and screamed murder at the beast.  Near him, Kurt was also defensive, arms up and head bowed to protect himself against whatever they intended to do next even though the beast was stepping back.

“Oh calm your weak human blood down.”  The Halfling admonished towards Kurt, ignoring Blaine completely.  “We want to see if you possess any healing powers of your own.”

Kurt lowered his protective arm, though kept his eyes on the Halfling warily.  His cheek was gashed and dripping with fresh blood.  It definitely showed no signs of healing up the way it would in the superhero comic books Blaine read, and it made Blaine furious.  It was cheap.  They attacked him when he wasn’t able to defend himself.  Like the people in the room below the water.  They had absolutely no sense of honor or fairplay.

The white-eyed one said something and the Halfling nodded, “Yes.  Unfortunate.  Maybe some other tests?”

Things got worse from there.

The hairy one unlatched Kurt’s chains from the post and led him over to the field aside the parking lot where Blaine could only watch in horror and cry out until his voice left him as Kurt was beaten before his eyes.  They punched him.  They slashed at his legs.  They did everything they could to hurt Kurt while keeping him awake and alive to suffer through it, and all Kurt did was let out the odd groan and gasping breath, taking it all because he had no other choice but to.

Eventually, they decided their hypothesis was flawed and the Halfling and the white-eyed one returned to play with the little box that had Kurt’s mother hovering above it still in suspended light.  The white-eyed one pressed buttons Blaine couldn’t see out of his tear glazed eyes and another image was brought up, this time of a male.  The image seemed to surprise them though, both of them taking a step away and looking for a moment before the Halfling mumbled.

“Finavarr…  Well… that explains the innate negation.”

Both glanced over at Kurt, laying on the ground, catching his breath, and looking towards Blaine quietly.  Words unspoken floated between them, ones that made Blaine’s heart crumble in his chest.

“Testing to see if he has an innate healing power is clearly futile.  Perhaps we should see if he has an active healing capacity….”  She glanced towards Blaine.  “On someone he may be inclined to use it on.”

Blaine did not like the way that sounded.  Less so when he heard Kurt cry out “No!” from where he was and trying to dredge himself up from the ground, wrestling the chains that bound him to the hairy Other who just held him in place without so much as flinching.

The sword was once again pulled free and directed towards Blaine’s face as his breath caught in his throat.  It was hard to see anything else but the reflective tip of metal directed between his eyes by the Halfling, who was paused as she listened to the nonsensical words of the white-eyed one.

Then Blaine saw a flash of metal move before his eyes, and the cry of not only Kurt, but his fellow captives filled his ears before they ran red hot and his own voice joined the fray.  His hand felt like it was burning and when his eyes, spilling over with involuntary tears, looked down, he saw his own blood pooling in the palm of his hand.

“Bring him over now Bruno.  Let’s see if he shares any special traits his mother possesses.” The Halfling said, sheathing her blade again and stepping away from Blaine as he tried to choke back the pain shooting up his arm from where he had been sliced from palm to inner elbow.

Kurt was led over by the hairy one, though it was more of Kurt running forward and the hairy one limiting his ability to get to Blaine as fast as he wanted to by trudging along at a gingerly pace.  The instant Kurt got close, he dropped to his knees where his own clothing had been sliced open and cuts were scabbing.  Bruised hands tore a strip off his shirt and quickly bound it over Blaine’s arm, the press causing Blaine to gasp and gag as the pain had no where else to go but through his vocal cords while Kurt gently shushed him and held the cloth in place.

All this while the Other’s and the Halfling observed.

“Did she cut anything major?” Jeff asked somewhere off to Blaine’s side.

“I don’t know… I don’t know….”  Kurt said weakly, looking around frantically to try and find something, anything that could help.  With nothing available to him, he looked squarely at Blaine and pressed his forehead to Blaine’s.  “Shh Blaine… it’ll be okay… it’ll be okay.”

Blaine was still howling in pain.  Everytime the pain seemed to subside it flared up again the next second.  He wanted to wrench his hand from Kurt’s hold and tuck it against his chest and curl up over it.  Kurt’s words, while well intended, were not exactly helping him feel better.

“Well… perhaps he’s just not a healer.”  The Halfling said, humor in her tone.

“Fix him… please…”  Kurt pleaded, looking back at her.

“I’m not a healer.  My gift isn’t remotely supportive in function at all.  Bruno is a shifter… and Ilu… well… their kind just dabble in the sciences.”

“Then get some bandaging… some water so I can clean it… anything…” Kurt’s face was turned away from Blaine as he begged, but Blaine could hear the waver in his voice.  

She snickered and shook her head.  “No.  Perhaps another test though… just to make sure…”

“No!”

There was the sound of metal on metal,  a breath taken in, and Blaine winced his eyes shut as he prepared for another hit.  Nothing came though except cursing from the woman, and when Blaine opened his eyes again, he saw Kurt and only Kurt.  His lover was wrapped around him protectively, and the Halfling was bumping her sword in the air where it seemed to keep hitting some kind of invisible barrier.  Somehow, Kurt was protecting Blaine from further harm.

“Well.  That’s intriguing…”  

Kurt kept holding on, face buried in Blaine’s shoulder and oblivious to what everyone else was seeing.  

“Well holy shit.”  Santana said, watching the scene unfold and drawing Kurt’s eyes up, followed by his head, as he looked over Blaine to ensure he was still alright before looking back to see why the Halfling was holding back from the attack he had been prepared to take for Blaine.

“Some kind of protective trait…”

Blaine was greeted once again by blue-green eyes staring at his when Kurt turned his head back.  “Are you alright?”

Blaine nodded.  Truthfully his arm was still on fire, and he felt like his might pass out at any moment from the blood loss, but at least Kurt was there in front of him.  If he died then and there, at least it was in Kurt’s arms.

More babbling from the white-eyed one, a grunt from the hairy beast, and the Halfling snorted in turn.  “Water activation.  Indeed.”

Kurt nibbled his lower lip, one hand still held firm against Blaine’s arm to stem the bleeding while the other lifted to stroke over Blaine’s cheek.  He replied to whatever had been said, though kept his gaze on Blaine.  “I did drown… it was when I was shot….”

Blaine winced, the memory of seeing Sebastian kick Kurt into the drainage ditch flooding through his mind.  

“Bruno.  Take him to the waters.  Before we take him with us, we will see the true extent of his powers.”

So much of what the Halfling woman said didn’t work for Blaine, and even though he was sure he could drift off to sleep right there, he pushed himself to sit up straighter as Kurt was pulled away from him by the beast, dragged towards the water’s edge even though he was fighting to get back to Blaine with each step backwards.

“Kurt…?’  Blaine whined softly, leaning his body forward and trying to reach out to Kurt with his good arm.  Everything felt foggy and imbalanced, like the world was off center below him, and all he knew of to do was try and anchor himself with the one person he knew could make it happen but that person was being pulled away.

“Oh shit… they’re going to hold him under water….”  Karofsky’s voice sprang up like punch to Blaine’s gut and he held his hand out as far as he was allowed to reach it, croaking as he repeated Kurt’s name over and over in a desperate plea.  He could see Kurt being dragged into the shallow end of the water, the hairy beast on one side of him and the Halfling on the other.  He cried and cried out as he watched them force his husband’s head down, watch them hold him back below the surface despite the frantic flailing of his arms and legs, watched the bubbles burst on the surface above him, and then watch everything go still.

Including the beating in Blaine’s chest.

  
  



	27. Chapter 25: The Escape

Blaine strained against his shackles until both his hands and feet had gone numb from circulation restraint.  Adrenaline surged through him while he fought to pull himself free from the post holding him in place and get to Kurt.  Get to him… save him… stop them…. He could hear his fellow captives talking behind him, but he only registered bits and pieces of what they were talking about.

“... bobby pins….”  
“... used his claw nails to lock them…”  
“... just a bit more…”  
“There!  Got it!”

The only thing Blaine could focus on was his lover being submerged, held in place by those beasts that seemed hell bent on taking away the only thing that truly mattered to Blaine.  It wasn’t until there was a body at his side that Blaine realized there was more to the words being spoken by his comrades.

“Hold still… Let me get you free…”  Santana huffed, grabbing at one of the shackles around Blaine’s wrist and poking one of her bent back bobby pins into the hole.  It fell off him a moment later, revealing the bruised and cut skin below it.  The other hand followed, and then his ankles, and soon he was rushing towards the Others and Kurt as fast as his legs could carry him.

That is until Santana grabbed him by the wrist and whipped him back.  “Come on.  We need to escape!”

“Kurt!”

“Is part Other… leave him and come on!”

Blaine wouldn’t have it though, and he pulled his wrist free to continue towards Kurt.

“Oh fuck…”

The Others looked up just in time to see Blaine rushing into their midst, the Halfling barely having the time to pull her blade out as Blaine dived in to grab at Kurt’s body, floating just below the surface of the water and scarily still.  Blaine wound his arms around him, and resurfaced, gasping for breath and turning to face what he was sure was his own death.  His rush to try and save Kurt when the rest of the community members were clearly going to flee ultimately meant his death. He wouldn’t die though without trying to at least give Kurt a chance. He couldn’t live without Kurt.  He didn’t want to live without Kurt.

However, instead of being faced with a blade or claws, Blaine found that in the moment it took for him and Kurt to surface the rest of the community members had a change of heart and were fighting back against the surprised trio of Others.  Jeff and Santana had pinned down the white-eyed one, who was probably easy to contain since Kurt’s presence somehow nulled out its powers.  Karofsky was whipping shackles around like a mace trying to hold off the hairy one - changed now into its gigantic wolf form, and Sam was running from the Halfling - probably the best strategy for dealing with that one.

It gave Blaine the opportunity to pull Kurt back to shore, glad for the fact they were in shallow water since he didn’t know how to swim. He laid Kurt down and tried to remember the procedure for dealing with drowning.  It was covered in all the textbooks they had in the medic office in town, but they generally didn’t pay much mind to.  In a place void of large bodies of water, drowning wasn’t exactly a concern.  Blaine did recall watching enough movies in his youth though where someone saved someone else from drowning, and so he went about replaying those scenes in his mind as he pumped his hands down on Kurt’s chest and then plugged his nose with one hand and pushed air into Kurt’s mouth with his own.  

He did it once… two times….  and on the third attempt Kurt coughed and rolled to the side, vomiting out the water that had filled him while Blaine’s heart flooded with relief.  He didn’t see anything else in that moment but Kurt.  Kurt may have been puking up water, his clothing torn, his exposed skin covered in bruises and cuts, but to Blaine he was absolutely gorgeous.  He was alive.

“Oh… god… what…?”  Kurt looked up, eyes just as blue as the water he had expelled from his mouth.  

“I’ve got you Kurt… it’ll be okay…”  Blaine crooned, rubbing Kurt’s side gently.

Whether or not that last statement of his was a lie though was up in the air.  Both of them looked to the scene unfolding in front of them.  The white-eyed one was easily kept in place, clearly physically weaker than the other two, and Jeff had been left alone to hold him down while Santana had gone to help Karofsky who was struggling to keep the wolf from biting him.  Sam was still running, but for how long he could keep it up was questionable.  Sam was already breathing heavily while the Halfling didn’t look fazed at all from the excursion.

“We… we have to help…”  Kurt coughed, spitting up more water into the mud he was laying in and then pushing himself up to a sitting position.

Blaine agreed, but how to help was another matter.  The group could run away or try to hold off the Others, but eventually they’d lose their stamina or make a mistake and that would be it.  They were just delaying the inevitable.  In all his years on the road he had never seen or heard of anyone getting away from the Others.  The closest thing he’d hear was Renegades setting up traps or going on suicide missions that caused decimation in Halfling villages - where the Halflings were still children and unable to fight back like the one they were facing.  

Kurt forced himself to stand, and Blaine could see he was less than sturdy on his feet as he rose so Blaine reached to support him with his own torn up arms as he stood alongside Kurt.  “I’m open to ideas on how to help…”

“I’ve got…. I…”  Kurt was looking from person to person with saucer wide eyes, stumbling on his words and ultimately saying nothing as Blaine watched him and helped keep him upright.

“It’s alright Kurt… let’s get you settled somewhere and then I’ll go and help…”  Blaine said quietly, trying to lead Kurt towards the nearby forest.  Perhaps if he could just get Kurt hidden away he’d have a shot at surviving.

“NO!”  Kurt flailed, and Blaine with his battered arms couldn’t hope to hold him back so he instead looked at his lover in silent questioning, eyebrows held high on his brow and even though he was sure they couldn’t go much higher, Kurt’s next move proved that they infact could.

Kurt raised both of his hands, trembling as he did, and stretched his fingertips out towards the fight unfolding ahead of them.  There was the slightest iridescent glimmer that sprang from Kurt’s fingertips, making Blaine jump back in surprise and then look wide-eyed at Kurt who was all too focused on what was going on ahead of him to acknowledge Blaine’s shock.

Things seemed to move in slow motion, if only for a fraction of a second, as several things happened at once.  Jeff was flung backwards off the white-eyed one, the wolf-man was shot away from Santana and Karofsky, and the Halfling ran into an invisible wall and bounced backwards off of it with a curse.

“Kurt…?”  Blaine breathed out, looking back and forth and trying to figure out just what was going on.

Kurt didn’t respond though, keeping his still shaking hands held out in front of him as each side of the battle slowly seemed to recognize that they had been pulled apart by an invisible force and then kept away by an equally invisible barrier.  It was the white eyed one who seemed to understand what was happening, pulling itself off the ground and walking close to Kurt where it babbled a stream of its words.

“No….”  Kurt said, voice just as shaken as his body.  Whatever he was doing looked like it took a lot of his energy and focus to maintain, and Blaine, over the initial shock of seeing his husband use magic, reached over to put a supportive hand on Kurt’s shoulder.

There was just the briefest relaxation of Kurt’s muscles with the touch, but as the white-eyed one spoke again the tension returned.  Everyone was gathering on each side of the barrier, and it was clear that the side that Kurt was on was the side that included members of the community as they walked up beside him.

“I won’t.”

Blaine kept his hand on Kurt’s shoulder as he kept replying in the negative to long strings of dialogue from the white-eyed one.  Eventually the Halfling looked towards her talkative colleague and snarled.

“Just give it up.  There’s no use.  He’s picked his side…”  She turned her stormy lilac eyes back to Kurt, “... the wrong side though.”

“We’re leaving.”  Kurt replied, not only telling the enemy ahead of them, but the rest of the community members at his side.  

The halfling let loose a growl that Blaine would have expected the still-in-wolf-form Other to have made and turned, walking away and sheathing her sword.  Behind her followed the Wolf beast.  Only the white eyed one remained, pulling a small token from a pocket Blaine hadn’t seen on its flowing robes and setting it onto the ground in front of Kurt as far as it could reach, uttering another string of unrecognizable words before nodding to Kurt and then turning away as it followed after the Halfling and the wolf.

“So… that’s it?  That seemed way too easy..”  Santana uttered, eyes locked on Kurt as Blaine looked back to her.  For saying it was easy, she looked like hell - hair pulled out in bunches from her ponytail, mud covering part of her body, and scratches up her arms from where the white eyed one must have fought her when she was trying to get it down.  

“That’s it.”  Kurt affirmed in a whisper, keeping his eyes on the departing creatures who were now walking into the lake until their heads were under the water.

“What if they follow us…?”  Karofsky asked.

“They can’t.”  Kurt murmured, eyes still trained out, “They can’t get close to any of you now.”

“So… you’ve got like… superpowers.”  Jeff said, the most intrigued of the bunch, walking up beside Kurt and looking down his arms and to his fingers.  “It’s like… The Invisible Woman or Jean Grey…. some kind of force field making thing… so cool!”

Kurt’s eyes moved for the first time since he took up this position, shifting to Blaine and raising his brows, “Cool?”

“Yeah!”  Jeff exclaimed, apparently thinking Kurt was responding to him.  “So… is it like a deflection shield or absorption or what?”

“Uh…”  Kurt glanced over at Jeff, “I… don’t… know…?”

“Fascinating…”  Jeff muttered, shaking his head and reaching over to slide his hand against the air.  If Blaine didn’t know there was a barrier there, he would think Jeff was miming.

“So… what now?  We just go back to the community?  Everything is status quo?” Santana snarked.

“Nothing is status quo… but we are going back.”  Kurt said.  He dropped his hands back to his sides and slumped against Blaine with a heavy breath.  

A lot of looks were shared between everyone in the group, but one by one people turned and began the march towards home.  When it was just Blaine and Kurt left, Kurt kneeled down with a small groan and scooped up the small token left behind by the white-eyed one.  This time there was no emission of light or prick to Kurt’s finger and so Blaine didn’t question the gift as he helped Kurt stand back up and they followed after everyone else.

The only one who spoke as they walked was Jeff, asking question after question of Kurt in a fanboy-like effort to try and understand what they had just witnessed. There was no urgency in their walk - especially since Blaine was helping Kurt along.  He had yet to see how badly he was hurt under his clothing, but given how he was limping along and his eyes bunched up with tears every so often, Blaine assumed it wasn’t pretty.  

“Wish we knew what they did with our horses…”  Sam grumbled when they stopped to take a breather after an hour.  The light was low enough now that Jeff could see the stars and figure out the quickest route back to the community by charting them.

“They killed them.  Like Pudding.  They don’t have any love for domesticated animals.”  Kurt offered quietly, turning his head away from Blaine.  “Sorry…”

Blaine just shook his head.  Pudding was a great dog, but she had always done what she wanted and that included following Kurt to where they had just escaped from.  She had given her life in the hopes that it might help.  Truly mans best friend.  “It’s okay Kurt… she was a smart girl.  She made her own choice.”

“It’ll take us at least a week if we keep walking slowly….”  Jeff interrupted, still looking up at the sky.  “We’d actually do better to find a town and see if there’s not some bikes or something we could use to move faster there.  Plus we should find a change of clothes because I’m sure I’m not the only one who ended up pissing myself back there rather than ask that shifter for a pee break and have him stand behind me while I dropped my drawers in the woods.”

“It would be good to find some medical supplies too…”  Blaine added, glancing towards Kurt and then down at his sliced arm, still covered in the strip from Kurt’s shirt which was glued down with his own blood.  That would be a bitch to peel off when the time came.

“Well I don’t suppose you have a map on you to help with finding a place.”  Santana huffed.

“No…”  Jeff spun in place as he looked up still, “But I do have several maps committed to memory.  If my calculations are correct then we’re only about an hour away from a town directly east.”

“Of course he’d have them memorized…”  Santana grumbled, standing up.  “Well come on then.  Let’s move.”

The walk seemed to take longer than an hour, but maybe it was just because Blaine was sore from head to toe, or maybe it was because, now that Jeff had pointed it out, he was smelling urine constantly and it was giving him one hell of a headache.  He wasn’t going to point fingers though.  He wouldn’t have wanted to pee under watch of any of those Others either - assuming they would have even granted them a bathroom break.

They made it though, Karofsky and Sam going up ahead to scout out the homes until they found one that they figured would make a good camp for the night.  Rooms were called and Blaine helped Kurt up the stairs to the only room with a bed big enough for them to share.

“I’m sorry…”  Kurt mumbled once Blaine had him laying back on the bed, removing his dirtied, torn, and bloodied clothes and leaving them discarded on the floor.

“It’s okay… I told you… Pudding -”

“Not Pudding, though I’m still guilty over that as well… for not telling you about me.”  

Blaine sighed, helping slide Kurt’s pants off and grimacing at the sight of purple and blue bruises mottling his skin along with several gashes that had clotted over in messy clumps.  “What was there to tell?”

“That I knew I wasn’t a real human for starters?” Kurt said with a whine to his voice as the fabric was pulled over his sensitive skin.

“Kurt… god…”  Blaine sat on the edge of the bed, taking a break from stripping his now half naked lover.  He leaned over and brushed hair away from Kurt’s face as he looked over the face he’d love even if it came with the pointiest of ears.  “... you think that had ever mattered to me?”

“I know if our places were switched that I’d be pissed.”  Kurt replied, pupils flickering in his eyes as he looked up at Blaine to search for the sincerity he needed.

“Well it’s a good thing you’re you and I’m me then.”  Blaine said simply, pressing a kiss down to Kurt’s forehead, tasting like sweat and mud but still sweet regardless.

“You’re a dumbass.”  

Blaine just chuckled at that and resumed getting Kurt naked for the least romantic of reasons, trying not to show Kurt through his expressions how bad he looked.  “I’m going to search for supplies Kurt… you try to rest okay?”

Kurt didn’t need to be told twice, eyelids falling shut as Blaine stepped out.  From Karofsky’s room there was already snoring, the same for Jeff on the couch.  The kitchen meanwhile was being raided by Santana and Sam who were openly elated about finding some cans of beans.

“Want in on this?” Sam asked when they noticed Blaine.

“No… not now anyhow… I’m going to check the houses around here for supplies.”

“Fine.  Have fun.” Santana said dismissively.

Blaine gathered as much as he could as he went from home to home.  Clothes that looked like they would fit him.  Some that looked like they would fit Kurt.  Bandages, gauze, ointment, tylenol.  Cans of soup, a bag of coffee beans, and some of those little packets of instant oatmeal. Blaine even found a phone.  

Kurt was still sleeping when he got back, so Blaine cleaned himself off with some water that had been standing in the toilet attached to this room for who knows how long and then changed.  

Just like Kurt had done for him once, Blaine cleaned Kurt off as he slept, slowly moving a wet rag over his lithe frame and then rinsing it out when it became more dirty than clean.  It took awhile, but eventually the only thing discolouring Kurt was his bruises and not the mud or dried, cracked blood he had all over him from before.  

Then Blaine set about cleaning the gashes and bandaging them over to the best of his abilities.  He mentally cursed himself for not trying to find a needle and thread because Kurt would need stitches in a couple places, but he was able to bandage those spots up tightly enough to keep the split skin as close as possible.

“Mmmm….”  Kurt woke slowly, eyes fluttering open and looking immediately towards Blaine.  “You call me angel but you’re the real gift from whatever gods there might be…”

Blaine smiled to himself, finishing up the wrapping of the last bandage around Kurt’s wrist.  “I found you some tylenol.  Before you even try to tell me you don’t hurt and not to bother - you should know I’m ready to force it down your throat if necessary.”

Kurt grumbled but opened his mouth, letting Blaine throw a few pills in which Kurt swallowed down dry.  Kurt was one of those kind of men that would go to any lengths to avoid medical care, medication included.  Blaine was sure if Kurt had a bone sticking out of his skin he’d try to play if off as a “sprain” just to avoid having to deal with someone else taking care of him.  

He dressed Kurt then, who fell back asleep despite Blaine having to lift and reposition him in order to get the clothes on.  They were a little loose, but better that than too tight and rubbing constantly against Kurt’s wounds.  The token was transferred from the pocket Kurt had been keeping it in from his ruined pants into a pocket on his new pants, and Blaine was relieved to find it didn’t hurt or react to him in any way.

Blaine tended to his own wounds after that, having to bite down on his lower lip to keep from screaming out when he tore the strip of fabric off his arm and revealed the gash which began bleeding again.  He definitely needed stitching on that monstrosity and regardless of whether or not he got them, he would have one hell of a scar down the inside of his arm when it healed.  

His wrists were all bruised, and cut in the same places as Kurt’s - the consequences of fighting the shackles they had been in.  He was also pretty sure he had pulled the small muscles in them, though that was impossible to know for sure until they regained enough feeling to register pain.  Without the same issues Kurt had about medicine, Blaine popped several of the pills as a preemptive strike against any new pains that might surface.

Then he joined Kurt in sleep.  The first real sleep he’d had in almost a week.

Morning came with the obnoxious chirping of birds that seemed to be the new major residents of this particular town and Blaine forced himself to get up, noting that Kurt was still sleeping like a stone on the other half of the bed, having barely moved from the night before.  Blaine quietly shoved off the bed and hobbled out of the room and down the stairs where he was met with Jeff and Sam sitting on the couch and eating some more of the canned beans they had found last night.

“Karofsky and Santana are looking around for anything we might be able to travel in.”  Jeff said, mouth still working on chewing and displaying a gross medley of brown and red as he spoke.

“Think Kurt is up to checking out any vehicles we come across?  See if he can fix them?” Sam asked.

Blaine shrugged.  “He’s still sleeping.  Honestly… he’s pretty banged up.  We’re better off trying to find something that works right off the bat.”

Sam and Jeff nodded, and then Jeff proceeded to talk about the different routes they might take.  If they didn’t find something to ride today they would travel from town to town until they did.  If they could find something, then it would be smooth sailing through to home.

Kurt joined them not long after, looking like he hadn’t slept a wink and bracing himself on the staircase as he slowly made his way down until Blaine rushed over to help him, scolding him for not calling for help when he woke up.

“Like I’d do that.” Kurt grumbled, sitting down with an oomph on the couch and taking a bowl of beans offered to him by Jeff.  At least Kurt was cognizant of the fact that he was terrible at letting others help him.

“So… how do you control your powers Kurt?  Is it… like purposeful or do you have to chant something or pull up a happy memory or -”

Kurt groaned at Jeff’s inquisition and winced his eyes shut, speaking through gritted teeth, “I told you yesterday.  I don’t know how it works. It. Just. Does.”

Jeff shrugged and turned to Sam, “I think it must be innate, just like their language.  You know that Marvel comics has an abundance of characters that have similar powers but DC….”

Blaine tuned Jeff out, despite the fact that he would have enjoyed a good conversation about comic books, and reached over to gently pat Kurt on the knee he knew didn’t have any bumps or bruises.

“We’re going to be okay Kurt.  You’ve made sure of that, no matter who your mom or grandfather was…”

The look Kurt gave him in response was pure skepticism, and Blaine didn’t get any verbal response either.  Kurt just ate his beans and then rested his weight against Blaine’s side as they waited for Karofsky and Santana to return.

Regardless of what Kurt might think, Blaine knew they would be okay.  If for no other reason than that they were together again and he could hold Kurt as much as Kurt would allow him to.  That was the best peace Blaine could imagine after the hell he had just endured.

 

 


	28. Chapter 26: Tornado

Jeff’s original estimate of it taking a week to walk back to the community was quickly discarded when it became clear that Kurt couldn’t keep up the pace with his injuries.  Karofsky and Santana hadn’t found any working vehicles or horses in the first town they had camped at, and so they had travelled from town to town in a jagged path, hoping to find something to quicken their travels for the last leg of the journey.  In this way, one week became two, and two became four.  

At least their travel-mates had gotten over the initial shock of Kurt’s background and powers.  Jeff had never been concerned, and had persisted in questioning Kurt much to Kurt’s annoyance.  Sam seemed okay with it, and had never said anything concerning, talking as easily to Kurt as he had before they had discovered his link to the Others.  Karofsky took a couple days, but he too warmed back up to Kurt, only reaffirming that Kurt was loyal to the community and not the Others.  Santana took the longest to get over the fact of Kurt’s Quarterlingness - ignoring him and shooting him glares for the better part of the week before mumbling a “I’m glad you’ve been around to keep Brit and Eugene safe.” off to the side as she slowed her walk to come up alongside Blaine and Kurt.  It was the closest Kurt would get to an apology from her and he nodded to her in response. “Of course.  I wouldn’t let any harm come to them.”

Kurt really needed to just rest as far as Blaine was concerned.  Pushing himself to walk all day long was obviously inhibiting his body from being able to heal the way it needed to - especially in his legs where the gashes kept reopening as he used his muscles to trudge along, also causing the swelling to remain.  Of course, Kurt would hear nothing of slowing down the group by taking a break for a few days to recuperate.  

So every night, no matter whether they were camping in a village or on the road, Blaine did his best to care for Kurt.  He went out of his way to find water to keep Kurt hydrated and washed up, rebandaged his wounds, and made sure Kurt had a comfortable place to sleep - whether it was a bed, or a nest of dried grass and leaves.  

“I wish you wouldn’t fawn over me like I was a baby.”  Kurt sighed as Blaine held out a couple painkillers to him along with a water bottle, as he had every few hours they walked.  

“I’m not Kurt.  I’m just trying to make this trek as easy on you as possible.”

Kurt grumbled to himself, grabbing the pills and swallowing them down with a quick swig of water before handing the bottle back to Blaine.  “You won’t even leave me alone to take a piss.”

Blaine looked off to the side as they continued walking, knowing he was guilty of that.  “I just… “

“You just what?  Like seeing my dick out?  Are worried I’m plotting some evil Other business if I go away for a couple minutes on my own?  Think I’ll fall over without my urine weighing me down?”

Blaine balked, jaw falling open for a minute before he flummoxed for a response, “No!  No!  None of that!  Well… I do like seeing your dick but I haven’t been peeking!”

Kurt shook his head with an accompanying snicker.  “Relax Blaine.”

“You don’t really think that I think that of you do you?  The Other thing I mean?” Blaine asked, taking Kurt by the hand and helping lead him over a ditch.  The rest of the group was walking ahead of them, as Blaine and Kurt were the slowest of them.

Kurt sighed.  “The thought had crossed my mind… but I’m constantly reminded by all you do of how much you actually do trust me.  You’re kind of ridiculous that way.”

“I’d rather be ridiculous than be blind to how much you care about the people in the community.”

“I’m kind of ridiculous for that too aren’t I?”

Blaine thought for a second before responding, wanting to make sure his words were as clear as his feelings, “Yes and no… I mean… I think if the community treated me like they treat you most of the time, I’d be a lot more angry at them and not so loyal… but there are good people there, and people that do care about you.  They’re the ones who see you for what you really are - magic or not.”

“And what’s that?”  Kurt asked quietly, less agitated and more attuned to Blaine.

“Someone who cares for others regardless of whether or not they care for him back.  You give yourself without expecting anything back.  I’d call you a saint but you’ve made your views of the Catholic church clear on a few occasions.”

Kurt smirked at that.  He had ranted to Blaine about not only the Catholic church, but most organized religions on a few occasions in the past few years.  Suffice it to say, Kurt understood the need for individuals to find spirituality and meaning for their existences, but had no problems noting how organized religions had been responsible for wars, injustices, and inequalities throughout human history.  

“I’m no saint Blaine.” 

“You’re my angel.”

Kurt rolled his eyes at that and just shook his head at Blaine, dismissing the term of endearment that had once again surfaced.  Kurt might not like it, but to Blaine nothing was closer to the truth.  

“You’re a sap.  Come on.”

They went for a couple more hours until they reached a farmhouse where they decided to spend the night since Jeff assured them that it would take a few more hours beyond that to get to the next village.

“A trampoline!”  Jeff announced happily when they walked into the house and looked into the yard behind it.

No sooner had he announced it then Jeff was running out back, climbing onto the stretchy expanse of black held in place by some very rusty looking springs.

“Uh… that doesn’t look very safe…..”  Karofsky pointed out, being ignored by Jeff who bounced a few times with childlike delight.

Somehow the trampoline managed to hold him and keep him bouncing for a solid half hour while everyone gathered what they could find.  The farmhouse had some patches of vegetables still growing up around it - a welcome change from that cans of food they were used to interspersed with rice and oatmeal.  Blaine was even able to find a needle and thread - things so simple yet they had eluded him for the past week.

“Santana took the main bed… “  Kurt grumbled as the dusk settled into night, revealing the stars overhead.  Blaine was sitting up on the trampoline now that Jeff had abandoned it and fallen asleep in a child’s bed in the house.  

“Come lie back with me here…”  Blaine said, holding a hand out to Kurt and helping him up.  As he laid back, Kurt laid with him, using Blaine’s good arm as a pillow as they quietly looked up into the night sky.  Not a word spoken as they stared at the constellations, Blaine wishing he had bothered to learn more than just the rudimentary ones that every schoolboy knew - Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and Orion’s Belt.

“I don’t know what I am or what I’m capable of Blaine…”

Blaine turned his head to the side, looking at Kurt who stayed staring up into the night sky as he continued.

“I don’t know how I do what it is I seem to be able to do… I don’t know if I’m human or Other or something else entirely… I don’t know if it’s going to get stronger or weaker… I don’t know if people should trust me… I don’t even know if I can trust myself…”

“Kurt -”

“And I’m scared to try to know… to want to learn.  I don’t want to be like them.  I don’t want this thing I have… I’ve only ever wanted to be normal and now it’s completely confirmed that I will never, ever be normal.”

Blaine recognized that Kurt just needed to vent, clamping his mouth shut and giving Kurt his full attention.

“But if I don’t figure out how to use this thing I have… I won’t be able to protect you all properly… and that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do… make sure you’re all safe.”

Kurt sighed, turning in against Blaine and tucking his head under Blaine’s chin with a murmur of “I don’t know what to do.”

Blaine waited a moment, bringing his torn up arm over Kurt to hold him lightly, making sure Kurt was done speaking before he responded. 

“Just… be you.  You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to Kurt.  Whatever protection you’ve been providing - that happened without you even knowing how to do it.  We can go back and things can be the same again.”

Kurt shook his head against Blaine, “No… what about runs?  What if they figure out how to get past whatever innate barrier I’ve got around me?  I have to be able to keep everyone safe Blaine.”

“That’s not your job…”

“But it’s the only reason they let me stay around.”

Blaine brushed his hand over Kurt’s hair gently, ever mindful of the cuts hidden along his scalp that were still mending.  “Kurt… the people who love you want you around for more than just that.  I don’t care if you can shield us or not.  I didn’t even know you did that until last week.  It doesn’t change anything for me.”

“Only because you’re a love blinded idiot.”  Kurt huffed, though his words were belied by his burrowing closer against Blaine’s body.

“Yeah…” Blaine really couldn’t deny that.

They fell asleep out there, laying on the trampoline in each other’s arms.  Blaine occasionally opened his eyes when a strong breeze floated over them but it was otherwise a good night.  No dreams (at least none he remembered), no rain (but that had been an issue all spring and summer), and because they were far enough away from the rest of their group, they weren’t subjected to the snores of others.

They had some more of the now wild growing vegetables for breakfast, digging out whatever they could to take with them.  Blaine stitched up Kurt’s deeper gashes, ignoring Kurt’s swearing and complaining as he did.  In turn, Kurt stitched up the length of Blaine’s arm - causing more swearing out of Blaine than he was sure he had spoken in his entire life.

“I didn’t know you had been working on the old quads.”  Blaine said as they began their walk.  The first stretch of the daily walk was always the hardest as they had to work against the stiffness and soreness in their bodies until it numbed out and their bodies could move more fluidly.

“Yeah… just didn’t want to lose those skills my dad had taught me.” 

“Did you work on Canary at all?”

Kurt made a small smile at the mention of Blaine’s own quad and then nodded, “Yeah.  She works, but I didn’t want to take her… I wanted it to be a surprise for you.”

Blaine leaned over to kiss Kurt’s cheek as that was revealed.  “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Today’s walk was only a few hours before they came to the next village where they were greeted by the sight of buildings that looked like they were all about to collapse on themselves.  The weather had been particularly hard on this little place, in the middle of the prairies with no trees to guard against the wind or elements.  Still, it was a place where they could scavenge for lunch, a change of clothing, and take a break.

“There’s a truck there…”  Kurt noted, pointing it out from where it was parked between two of the buildings.  “I’ll check it out.”

Everyone went their own ways.  Kurt poked through the engine of the truck, Blaine going to find a pair of fresh clothes for them, Santana and Jeff looking for food, Karofsky giving himself a much needed hair cut with a pair of scissors he found, and Sam looking for any baby items he could take home to Mercedes.

It was the triumphant rev of an engine that brought everyone back together and to Kurt, hands all black and dirty from working on the vehicle, but a true smile gracing his angular features nonetheless.

“We need to gas it up… alcohol might work if we can find some.  I recall my dad saying something about using alcohol in cars when I was a kid… I just hope it wasn’t some urban legend because I doubt there’s anything else we could use around here.”

No one argued with that, especially since Kurt had the market cornered on vehicle knowledge, and went to locate some liquor, leaving Blaine with Kurt.

“You’re amazing.”

Kurt rolled his eyes and dug his hands back into the engine, a mess of metal and tubes that Blaine couldn’t begin to figure out.  “Clear out the inside of the vehicle.  Looks like the previous owner enjoyed driving in his or her own filth.”

Blaine did as he was told, emptying the truck of years of papers, empty pop cans, gum and chocolate bar wrappers,potato chip bags, changes of clothing (apparently it had belonged to a woman), torn up pantyhose, and lots and lots of change congealed in nail polish that had dripped out of the many little bottles spread throughout the vehicle.  The box of the truck had bags of garbage in it, which Blaine just tossed to the side as well.  He might be littering, but it wasn’t like there was going to be a garbage pickup anywhere in this little town anytime soon anyhow.

By the time he was done, a strong wind had picked up, and Blaine kept his head turned away because the damned thing was spitting pebbles and dirt into his face.  

“You should have something to eat and also clean off before we go!”  He called down to Kurt from the box of the truck, having to yell in order to speak over the whistle of the wind around him.

Kurt slammed down the hood of the truck and nodded up to Blaine while wiping his dirty hands on his shirt.  “What do we have?”

Blaine hopped out of the emptied box and went to a bag he had left sitting by one of the tires, thankfully out of the path of the wind, “We have a box of crackers, some coffee beans, and spam!”

“Delightful…”  Kurt grunted with no shortage of sarcasm.  They sat down, out of the wind, and ate the makeshift lunch as they waited for the comrades to join them - hopefully with something that could be used as fuel.  

When a crack echoed from across the street, both of them looked up and gaped as they watched the building there bend and then crumple under the weight of the wind hitting it. 

“Holy shit…”

Kurt stood up and yelled, “Santana!  Karofsky!  Sam!  Jeff!”

Lunch was abandoned in favour of yelling for their friends, looking around frantically, and wincing as the wind burned their exposed skin.  Jeff emerged from a nearby house, then Sam, then Karofsky and Santana.

“Oh… shit….”  Karofsky uttered, pointing towards the west side of town where everyone else let their gaze travel the instant they were reunited.

Blaine had only ever read about tornadoes in books, and certainly had never seen one with his own eyes before.  That was a tornado though.  Brown and white and swirling and moving their way.  It pointed at the earth from its connection to the clouds overhead and that, to Blaine, was a clear indication of the decimation it intended to deliver.

“We need to… ah… find underground shelter… “ Jeff stammered, eyes wide and blue and fearful.

“Did you guys find any cemented basements anywhere?”  Kurt asked, eyes still glued to the encroaching swirl that was blowing up dirt and dry grass all around it.

“Yeah!  This way!”  

Santana led them towards a house, and none of them questioned the tacky decor or pictures of cats that adorned the walls as they followed her in and down into small, unfinished basement that still had a dirt floor but was encircled by cement.  There they crouched together under the stairs.  

“Fuck…. fuckfuckfuck….”  Santana said, looking upwards. “If we got away from those assholes only to die because of a fucking strong gust of wind I am going to be the most pissed off ghost…”

No one responded, just listening to the whistling wind, the crack of buildings around them, and the light breaths of one another.  

They knew the tornado was closer though when the cracking of buildings turned into full fledged snaps that occurred with increasing frequency and then the floor above them became to shake as air blew through it and pulled upon it in an effort to rip it from the foundation.

“Oh god… oh god… Kurt!  Do something!” Sam whined.

Kurt looked back at Sam in surprise, and Blaine watched at Sam’s urgent, pleading look was mirrored by Santana, Karofsky, and Jeff.  

“I… I don’t know how… I mean… I…”

“Fuck   Come on demon spawn.  Do your little sparkly finger thing and keep us alive!”  Santana spat, gesturing towards Kurt’s fingers as the wind picked up with a howl above them.

“I don’t know how to just do that!” Kurt spat back, wincing as a board above them lifted and pulled back into the wind.  The opening in the ceiling was like a vacuum, sucking up all the dust and causing all the boxes in the basement to slowly be pulled towards the point of suction.  

It caused them all to back against the wall, trying to grip the smooth material that wouldn’t give under their fingertips to avoid being pulled in themselves.  The way the wind was whipping around them now and the way the floorboards above them were being pulled up told them all that if they weren’t right under the tornado, then they were about to.  It was terrifying.  Blaine’s heart was racing like it hadn’t in at least a week, but there was no negotiating with this natural disaster, this wasn’t just torture to get information out.  The tornado didn’t care what it harmed in its path.  It didn’t have any reservations about what it did.  It certainly wasn’t going to pick and choose who died and who didn’t based on closeness to Kurt.  

Things began lifting and circling off the floor.  Boxes that were emptied of papers that spun in the air, nails and screws, the boards from the staircase they had been using for shelter.  They fought between looking at the scene and having to close their eyes - part out of protectiveness and part out of the pain of eyes being pulled from sockets.  There was no more arguing because everyone was so focused on keeping their bodies pulled against the wall and curling up as much as they could on themselves to protect their bodies from being hit by the flying debris.

Blaine reached to take Kurt’s hand.  He needed Kurt to know that he loved him if this was going to be what did them in.  Hands though didn’t connect as Blaine saw that Kurt had his fingers outstretched, jabbing them forward an inch every so often.  He was trying to use his magic to protect them - and clearly failing.

Santana had it the worst.  Her long hair whipped around her head and kept hitting her when the wind changed direction.  She even had small cuts on her face from the force of the hits. Jeff had a hand over a cut on his leg from a nail that had stabbed him there.  Sam was unhit - probably on account of being beside the much larger man that was Karofsky who now had a few slices to show for facing the storm they were in.  

Blaine knew he had also been hit by something on the side, but he didn’t care to look down.  What was one more wound when he already had so many and didn’t even know if they’d get out of this alive?

It took Jeff getting hit by a flying board to answer that question.  He yelped and then crumbled to the ground.  Without consciousness, he was unable to fight back against being pulled into the wind and was dragged out into the middle of the room.

Suddenly everything fell in the room and the wind was gone.  Blaine had to look around to make sure it wasn’t a dream because it had happened so quickly.  Overhead they could still see the swirling of boards, dirt, and miscellaneous objects as they were pulled up by the tornado which was definitely right on top of them.  At the basement line though, there was nothing.  It was like watching a TV show while in the calm of your own chair.  Surreal.

“You fuckin’ did it!”  Santana declared, smacking Kurt on the back who was completely engrossed in keeping his fingertips pointed above them, gritting his teeth as she hit a sensitive spot on him.

Blaine checked on Jeff who was already waking, though he would have a nasty bump on the side of his head.  As the storm passed over their heads, they all watched with awe.  It was such a terror of nature.  At one point they saw the limp bodies of birds being tossed around and at another point a moose even floated by.  

When the storm passed and the winds above died down enough for things to settle on top of the invisible barrier, Kurt dropped his hands down, the barrier dropping with them.  They could feel a slight wind again, though nothing like what they had experienced under the tornado’s wrath.  

Kurt slumped down then, and Blaine turned his attention back to him, enfolding his arms around him and holding him close.  Whatever he had done exhausted him, and while the rest of the group worked on stacking the furniture and boards left in the basement to create a new staircase to get out, Blaine just cradled his lover in his arms.  

It took both him and Karofsky to carry Kurt out, and Blaine had the fleeting thought that he’d be able to just crawl into the box of the truck with Kurt and then they could be off - getting home within a day or so.  However, the sight of the town, or what was once a town, told him otherwise.  Buildings has collapsed on one another or been torn apart, the streets were flooded with boards and debris, and the truck was tipped on its side.

But, because of Kurt, they were alive still.  They could still travel home, they could still see their friends and families, and they still had the hope of another day to cling to.

  
  
  
  



	29. Chapter 27: Hallelujah

Kurt was laid out on the ground to rest as the rest of the group surveyed the damage done by the tornado.  The town they had walked into was now better described as a landfill.  There was no longer an obvious road through the center of the buildings.  Instead there was a collection of beams and garbage and even some poor dead animals that had been victims of the natural disaster.

“Well… shit.”

Santana’s words fit how Blaine felt about the situation perfectly.  He knelt by Kurt and gently felt for his heartbeat and then made sure he was still breathing while the rest of the group went to uncover the truck from shingles, planks, and debris that had it had buried under.  Then they all worked on pushing it up, off the side it had fallen on, and back onto its wheels.

Hopefully after all their exertion the damned thing would still run.

Blaine pulled Kurt into his lap, just watching as everyone went to collect the alcohol they had been working to find before the storm and used it to fill the tank as much as they could.  He ignored though when Santana took a little swig of something that looked like vodka from where he was sitting.  She was entitled something to ease her stress.  

“...Okay?”

Glancing down at Kurt, Blaine smiled to see him waking up, lashes fluttering as his lover took stock of where he was and what was going on.

“Yeah Kurt.  We’re all okay.  You saved us… again.”

Kurt pushed himself up to sitting with a grunt.  No amount of Blaine telling Kurt to take it easy would get him to rest like Blaine knew he should, so he just kept a hand at Kurt’s back to steady him.  “Well maybe if you all weren’t such constant babies I wouldn’t have to.”

It was a joke, one that put a grin on Blaine’s face.  Kurt was fine if he could pull out the snark like he just had.  

“Fuck… the truck looks even shittier than when I first saw it.”  Kurt noted as he looked over to where everyone was working, trying to clear a path for the vehicle to pull out along assuming it was still functional.  They probably should have made sure of that before they did all the work.

“Small towns like this one was… a truck like that might have well been a cadillac.” Blaine muttered, hopping to his feet and holding a hand out for Kurt the instant he saw Kurt move to stand on his own.

“If it gets us back to the community it could be a limo for all I care.  Let’s see if it works.”

Blaine strode aside Kurt, just in case he showed any signs of weakness and needed to be caught or just needed Blaine to lean on.  As always though, Kurt pushed through whatever pain and exhaustion he was experiencing, climbing into the cab of the truck and fiddling with some wires he had pulled out earlier.

“Tell everyone to cross their fingers and pray to whatever gods they care about.”

Blaine relayed the message to the group, most of whom just smirked in response, and then they waited as Kurt worked to hotwire the old vehicle.  Blaine’s heart beat quickened, hoping, wishing….

_**BRRRRrrrrrrummmmmmmMMMmmm** _

The cheer that went up among the small group might have been heard clear across the prairies.  Blaine walked around the vehicle and into the passenger seat while everyone else climbed up into the box of the truck - smiles everywhere.

The window between the cab and box was opened, and Jeff directed Kurt as Blaine watched in amazement as Kurt backed the truck up like he had been driving for years and then shot out down the road.  The truck was anything but smooth as it drove - in fact the whole rig seemed to hiccup periodically and there was a whine coming out of the engine that Kurt was muttering to himself about.  Like the Other language though, mechanics was completely foreign to Blaine, so the words Kurt was using to describe the problem might have well have been Russian.

“Your dad taught you to drive?”

Kurt nodded, keeping his eyes on the road, “Taught me with a standard first.  Good thing too…. this thing has a sticky clutch.”

“My dad told me to wait until I was sixteen and then he’d pay for driver training…”  Blaine mused, glancing out the window and marvelling at how fast the landscape was moving beside him.

“Joys of being the son of a mechanic I guess.” Kurt said, accented by a grunt as he wiggled the stick between them.  “You did well enough on the quad though.”

“I guess.”  Blaine shrugged.  “Something different about being in an enclosed vehicle though… quad was just kind of like being on a horse that was less temperamental.”

A rare Kurt grin formed, and for a moment the pair exchanged smiles before Kurt put his attention back on the road.  “I could teach you… how to drive a vehicle like this.”

“Would there be a point?  I mean… how much longer until there’s none of them left that work or there’s nothing else that can be found to use for fuel?”

Kurt shrugged then, “Never know when it’ll come in handy.  I figured, years ago, that I’d never end up driving a stick shift again… but here I am.”

“You were really something down there you know… magic… it’s… I don’t see how anyone can fault you for it.  Whatever it is you can do, you protected us all.”

Kurt stiffened beside him, his lips clamming up as he took in a hard breath and kept his eyes glued forward.  

“I know you probably don’t want to talk about it… but I want you to know that I still think you’re as amazing as you always have been to me.”

More silence.

Blaine sighed and went back to looking out his window, trees moving past him in rapid succession.  Kurt would have to talk about it sometime.  Blaine just didn’t want it to happen because some ignorant assholes back at the community forced him into it.

“Remember when you vomited out the rainbow?”

Sam’s head had popped into the small window between Blaine and Kurt.  The question was so odd that Blaine had to look back and give Sam a look of confusion.  He had never…

“Don’t remind me Sam.  That was years ago.”

Oh.  Sam had been asking Kurt.

“Wait… rainbow vomit?”

Sam chuckled and before he knew what was happening, the blonde haired man was crawling through the small window and sitting himself between Blaine and Kurt, forcing Blaine’s side to press into the door with the lack of space.  “So.  When we were on the road… all of us from Ohio anyhow… we found this stock truck full of candy.  Everyone was given a box of some kind of treat to carry.  I had Jolly Ranchers, Mercedes had Caramilk Bars… you get the ideas.  So Kurt was given Skittles.”

Blaine could already see where this was heading, but just grinned and looked past Sam at his husband who was shaking his head in shame.  Kurt wasn’t stopping the story from being told, but clearly did not like that he was about to be embarrassed for something that had happened years ago.

“Anyhow… of course none of us kids were saving our candy, much less sharing it like we should’ve been.  I can’t eat Jolly Rancher’s anymore because of it.  But Kurt… Kurt was being perfectly, well, Kurt-like and rationing his Skittles.  He still had most of his box when everyone else had stomachaches from eating all their candy.”

Blaine just nodded and kept listening in, making a mental note to ask their friends for more stories about younger Kurt when they got back because even though Kurt wasn’t enjoying this, Blaine was.

“So Kurt has the whole box of candy and everyone is begging him for some and he’s turning his nose up at them -”

“I DID NOT turn my nose up at people.  I was trying to be responsible!”

Sam shook off Kurt’s interruption and kept going.  “So he has all this candy, won’t share, and won’t eat it himself.  Then there’s this dry spell where we weren’t able to find any fresh water to drink and no pop or nothing… but there was a liquor store….”

“Oh no…”  Blaine said with a chuckle.  This was getting better quickly.

“And so Papa Hummel finds Kurt the least alcoholic beverage he can find in the store and Kurt drinks it, telling everyone else it tastes nice and light.  The rest of us were totally taking advantage of the situation and drinking whatever the adults would let us have thinking we were total badasses for it.  Well… the next morning Kurt is totally hung over…. we all were though.  No big deal right?  Except that after he had drunk the night before his rational brain went somewhere else and he totally scarfed down all his skittles.  We get no more than five minutes into our hiking then Kurt is spewing rainbow chunks EVERYWHERE!”

Blaine couldn't hold back.  Between the content itself, the absolutely animated way Sam is storytelling, and the look on Kurt’s face - it was hilarious.  He laughed so hard he had to hold in his stomach while Sam kept going on with the description, making it impossible to stop his guffaws.

“Literally!  If people didn’t know already that Kurt was gay before that, they definitely knew at that point!  His poor dad was trying to help him and Kurt just kept spraying the rainbows everywhere until his stomach must have been completely empty.  Bleh!  Bleh!  Bleh!  Everywhere!”

“I fucking hate you Sam.”  Kurt grumbled from his squashed position in the driver’s seat.

“You love me. Anyhow, we find a convenience store still stocked not three days later and Kurt won’t go anywhere close to the skittles.   Said he was going to be chaste when it came to coloured candy from then on in.”

“And I’ve maintained that vow of chastity.”  Kurt noted plainly, getting giggles in response from both Blaine and Sam.

“I’ve half a mind to ask Jeff for embarrassing stories about you now Blaine.”  

Blaine let his eyes roll, “First of all, you wouldn’t have to ask.  Any and all of the Warblers are keen on sharing stories about the idiotic things we’ve done.  Secondly, I’m pretty sure you’ve heard them all at this point.”

Memories of their home hit Blaine then, and he looked out over the road, hoping to see that home in the distance despite it being far too early to see much of anything.  It seemed like so long ago that they were together there, though it had only been a few weeks at most.  He remembered how Kurt would smile warmly as their friends would pass in and out of the house.  Some to just visit and share such stories, some to drop off children for Kurt to watch, and others still to ask Blaine questions about their pets.  With everything in him he missed that place and that time.  Hopefully they would soon be back to it.  He would have his bed back and Kurt back in it with him.  Things could be normal again.

The truck lasted them a few hours before it went dead again after burning up all the fuel.  The good news was that in that short time they had covered the same distance as they had all week and would be able to hike back to the community within a couple of days instead of a couple weeks.  Jeff made a note of the truck’s location, as Kurt was set on being able to get back to it for parts to use on his mechanics projects, and then they walked for an hour before finding a suitable place to sleep under the stars.

“Do you think there’s been any rain since we’ve been gone?” Kurt asked quietly as he nestled in alongside Blaine.

Blaine shrugged, “I don’t know.  If the land around here is any indication then I doubt it.  Everything is brown and crunchy and the dirt is all cracks.”

“I told Mercedes and Kitty where the water bottles and food rations I’ve been hoarding were in case they needed them.”

Blaine nodded, turning his head away from the stars and towards Kurt.  Though he didn’t need to feel guilty about giving away the goods he had been so careful about saving away, Blaine knew that Kurt did anyhow.  “That’s fine.  I’d rather the kids have it.”

“Yeah… I thought the same.”

Kurt turned in against Blaine then.  The first time that he had initiated a cuddle since… well… Blaine couldn’t think of the last time.  Blaine would take it though, wrapping his arms snugly around Kurt and holding him close for whatever comfort he needed.  Soon they’d be home and in the comfort of their own beds without having to listen to everyone snore around them at night.  

He would never, ever, EVER complain about Kurt hogging the blankets ever again.

Not that he ever really had before.

Morning came too quickly, and with it the aches that had settled into their bones overnight.  They pushed through, as they had since the start of this journey, and forced their bodies to move until well past nightfall when their bones were numb and the aches a memory.

“I don’t want to stop.”  Santana said, her beleaguered expression casting doubt on her words.

“Neither do I… so close to home…”  Sam echoed.

They were close.  Only a few more hours and they’d be there.  So, without voting on it, they carried forward, each step bringing them closer to their beds and the ones they loved.  

They were two hours out when Santana spoke up.

“What are we going to tell everyone?”

“Tell them about what?”

“About Kurt.”

Blaine blinked and looked towards his lover, his husband, his best friend.  The man was silent, brooding as he always did, and letting a conversation about him carry on without his words contributing.

“I think we tell them everything, except for how we got away from them.  Say it was a lucky break.  Don’t tell them about what he can do.”  Karofsky said, looking Blaine’s way as if for permission.

“Why… why can’t we tell them?”  Jeff asked, also paused to look their way.  “I mean… it’s really awesome what he can do.”

“Because they’ll put me in a cage, like man had done for thousands of years with things they don’t understand….”  Kurt said finally, eyes cast towards the ground.  Blaine held him closer to his side as he said it.  He’d never let them do that to his Kurt.

“But… that’s stupid.  You protect us… and you keep protecting us.  No matter what you’re one of us.”  Jeff said, his naive perspective belying his intellect.

“They’ll want to kill him for being part Other…”  Karofsky explained to the solemn crowd. “...except once they realize that he’s what’s been keeping us safe, they’ll happily lock him up to take advantage of that power.”

“They won’t trust him because of his blood, but they’ll want to hold onto him because of what it can do.”  Santana offered in addition.

“But… but….” Jeff shook his head, having an obviously difficult time taking that in.  It was why he was one of Blaine’s better friends though.  He always saw the best in others, and always hoped they would do their best in turn.  It was as if he had never experienced darkness in his life.

“We can’t tell them Jeff.  Promise you won’t tell them.”  Sam urged, stepping in front of the other blonde man and looking at him desperately.  

Jeff sighed, looking past Sam and towards Kurt again.  “You know I won’t.  I wouldn’t do anything to hurt my friends…”

“Thank you.”

It was spoken by everyone else aside from Kurt, who gave Jeff a thankful nod instead.  They all resumed walking, Kurt and Blaine taking up the rear as usual since they already had one another.

_“I've heard there was a secret chord_   
_That David played, and it pleased the Lord_   
_But you don't really care for music, do you?_   
_It goes like this_   
_The fourth, the fifth_   
_The minor fall, the major lift_   
_The baffled king composing Hallelujah…”_

Blaine smiled over at Kurt, singing under his breath as he walked on.  Hearing Kurt sing, even so far into their relationship, was a rare, beautiful thing.  Whatever brought it on, be it being close to home or the gift their friends had given them by agreeing to keep what Kurt to do secret, wasn’t evident.  What was evident though was that Kurt was showing Blaine in the only way he knew how that he was grateful.

_“Baby I have been here before_   
_I know this room, I've walked this floor_   
_I used to live alone before I knew you._   
_I've seen your flag on the marble arch_   
_Love is not a victory march_   
_It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah”_

In front of them, their friends sang the chorus absently.  Kurt ended up not being quite as quiet as he must have hoped for given how they were chiming in.  He did look surprised, not only because they heard, but because of how they chose to acknowledge it.  Before long they were all singing the old song.

_“I did my best, it wasn't much_   
_I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch_   
_I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you_   
_And even though it all went wrong_   
_I'll stand before the Lord of Song_   
_With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah_

_Hallelujah, Hallelujah_   
_Hallelujah, Hallelujah_   
_Hallelujah, Hallelujah_   
_Hallelujah, Hallelujah_   
_Hallelujah, Hallelujah_   
_Hallelujah, Hallelujah_   
_Hallelujah, Hallelujah_   
_Hallelujah, Hallelujah_   
_Hallelujah”_

“I loved the k.d. lang version of that song…”  Santana spoke softly when silence graced them yet again.

“I liked the version they used in Shrek….”  Karofsky murmured.

“I always loved the original….”  Kurt added in.  

“I’m not sure if it was any different from any of those,” Jeff muttered, “But I remember hearing it first in the Watchmen movie.”

“That was a great movie.” Sam contributed.

Blaine just smiled, for once being the quieter between him and his husband as the group segwayed between songs they liked, movies they enjoyed, celebrities they had obsessed over.  Had any of them survived?  If so, was the transition to the life they must have now difficult?  Were they able to survive without dieticians, fitness experts, make-up, and hair coloring?  And, god, what would any of them do when they started going gray and there was no pharmacist from which to buy hair colour for themselves.

“Home.” Was the one word that broke up the conversation, all of them looking forward to see the town in the distance.  It was nearly dawn and the horizon was just showing the cracks of light coming up from the east which bathed their little town in a dim golden light.

It may has well have been heaven.

 


	30. Chapter 28: Healing

It was Santana who cried first out of their group.  They had been intercepted by a patrol as they walked towards the town and brought first to the clinic to be checked out.  There Santana was reunited with Brittany, still being cared for by the medics.  Santana fell to her knees when she saw Brittany, wrapping her arms around Brittany’s waist and hanging onto her.  Great choking sobs fell from her mouth and against Brittany as Santana let out whatever stress she had been carrying inside of her for the months she had been gone.  

“Santana….?”  Brittany had asked, eyes looking over Santana as if she was part of some dream she was in.  It took her a few minutes of Santana telling her how much she loved her, how she’d never leave her again, and how much she missed her for Brittany to snap  out of her trance and drop to her own knees where she embraced back Santana and cried out in happiness.

That was only the beginning though.

There was more happy tears as families were reunited.  Sam with Mercedes and the girls, Jeff with his Warbler brothers, Karofsky with his kind-of-sister Kitty and honorary nephew Isaac and niece Gwen.  There were also plenty of sad tears as the survivors confirmed the worst to the community  - most of those that had left were dead now, killed by the O thers .  Everytime someone came by to hear what they had dreaded there was always that horrible choking sob that made Blaine hold Kurt’s hand just a little bit tighter as they sat together on a clinic bed while Mike and Carole took turns checking them over and tending to their mess of wounds.

“You’re lucky neither of you got infected with gashes like those.”  Carole tutted before wiping a tear away from her eye and rushing off to take care of Azimio’s heartbroken girlfriend who was hugging Karofsky tightly, spilling big tears and heavy sobs against his chest.

“Was it really luck?”  Mike whispered, glancing between Blaine and Kurt as he slipped on a fresh pair of gloves. 

Both of them nodded.  As far as Blaine was concerned it was luck that they had figured out how to get out of the shackles, luck that Kurt figured out how to protect them, luck that they had found medical supplies.  

“That healing thing… that was a one time gift from my mother.”  Kurt murmured.  Blaine had a silent moment as he  realized that he hadn’t been following what Mike was suggesting.  Mike had thought that maybe Kurt had some kind of healing ability after he had risen from the dead years ago.  An ability he had somehow put to use to protect himself from getting infected.  

“Well… all these cuts and gashes… and Blaine’s haphazard stitch job… you’re  making up now for all the scars you lost.”

Kurt just nodded and for the first time that day squeezed Blaine’s hand.  Whether it was a quiet thanks for the work he had done taking care of Kurt’s wounds, or as a silent show of relief that Mike hadn’t pushed when it came to knowing more about the way Kurt had healed a few years earlier - it didn’t matter.  Blaine could finally feel Kurt’s tension deplete through their connected hands and it was worth whatever reason there was for it.

“Blaine.  You’ll probably notice that you’ll have lost some degrees of flexibility in your arm.  I can’t tell for sure since the scarring is covering it up now, but it looks like the slice might have gone through some tendon.  Won’t be able to confirm how bad it is until everything is completely mended.”

Blaine nodded, looking down at his arm.  The scar looked like his skin had bubbled up  over the surface of his skin with bits of stitching sticking out here and there.  It certainly wasn’t one of those “cool” scars that seemed to make someone look manlier or tougher.  If anything, it was grotesque.  The slice had been clean when it had been made, but now it was anything but clean - healing up in jagged stripes that was as far as straight as a line could be.

“Now open wide…”  

Blaine obediently opened his mouth so Mike could shine a flashlight in and check over his teeth and down his throat.  He assumed nothing of note was discovered because Mike stepped over and directed Kurt to do the same a minute later.

“You have a really badly cracked molar Kurt….”  Mike murmured with a shake of his head.

“‘ah ‘ow.” Kurt responded with his mouth still open to Mike’s flashlight.  He knew, Blaine translated in his head, shaking it in disbelief.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Kurt didn’t respond until Mike was out of his face and digging through drawers in the room.  “Because there was nothing you’d be able to do about it.”

“But it has to hurt….”

“It does.”

“I could have given you more painkillers….”

“We might have needed them for someone else.”

Blaine sighed and hung his head a little.  He didn’t know why he expected less out of Kurt.  Kurt could have an arm sliced off and hanging by the bone and would still insist that a hundred people with a small scratch had more important health concerns than he did.  

“Okay…” Mike interrupted, signifying his emergence from the supply drawers.  Blaine felt his stomach stiffen and turn in on itself.  Mike had in one hand a pair of pliers and in the other a set of surgical scissors.  “Blaine, can you help me with this or should I call in Carole?”

“He’ll help.”  Kurt answered, turning his body so that he could lay back on the bed and  open his mouth up .

“What about….  anesthetic ?  Or something…?”  Blaine uttered, sliding off the side of the bed and walking around it to Kurt’s other side.

“Don’t have any.”  Mike replied plainly, shining the flashlight into Kurt’s open mouth again.  “Haven’t for awhile.”

“‘i’s ‘ine.” Kurt insisted.  Blaine just shook his head once again.  Sure.  He would tough it out while his tooth was getting yanked out now but Blaine would be the one who’d have to  deal with him later.

“Just, keep him held down if you could Blaine.  I know Kurt’s tough, but the body sometimes reacts on its own.”

Blaine nodded and gently drew an over over Kurt’s torso, locking eyes with his man.  Kurt’s eyes shone up at him, silently supporting him.   With anyone else, Blaine would have been the one trying to soothe, but when it came to Kurt, Blaine was the one who worried and fretted.  It was pure irony that Kurt was the one about to get a tooth pulled but Blaine was the one that needed to be calmed.

He couldn’t look when Mike put the scissors in, but couldn’t avoid the sound of the gum being snipped, like a stack of papers all being cut at once with a pair of too dull scissors.  Nor could he help but keep Kurt’s freshly retensed body from jerking up against his arm which was quickly joined by his other arm to keep Kurt back against the bed.

“It’s okay angel.  It’s okay.”

Between whatever pain he was experiencing and the term of endearment, Blaine ended up on the receiving end of daggers shooting out of Kurt’s eyes.  

Gum cut, the pliers were put into Kurt’s mouth next, and Mike was good about working quickly so Kurt didn’t end up choking on his own blood or having to wait in dread of what would happen next.  There were a few pops, a crack, and the absence of Kurt breathing as he held his breath through the extraction, and then Mike set down three very bloodied chunks of tooth down in a small metal pan beside the bed.

“Sit up.  Spit.”  Mike directed next, holding a bowl out in front of Kurt who did exactly as ordered, filling the bowl up with so much saliva and blood that Blaine had to turn around lest he add his own puke to that mixture.

No one would have ever had guessed Blaine had spent the past few years delivering calves, castrating dogs, and otherwise working on animals much the same as Mike worked on humans based on how he reacted to his lover being hurt.  For anything else his stomach was a rock.  For Kurt, it was mush.

“Rinse your mouth out.”  Blaine heard Mike say next, followed by the telltale sound of someone drinking water and swishing it around in their mouth before spitting it all back up.

“Open.”

Blaine knew the process.  He had done it on a kid before that had lost a tooth after falling out of a tree.  Kurt was having gauze shoved in the side of his mouth until the gum was able to clot up and heal on its own.  

“Okay.  Aside from that, and follow-up to remove the stitches you put in Blaine, you two are free to go.”

Blaine nodded, looking back then at Kurt who had one cheek puffed out like a chipmunk and a look of pure irritation on his otherwise pretty angular features.  Blaine couldn’t stand dental work being done on him, so he could only imagine how much Kurt hated it since he wasn’t a touchy-feely person to begin with.

“Given all the questions going around, Santana promised the townspeople that there would be a meeting tomorrow on the hill so that all questions could be answered.”  Mike noted as they left.  

Kurt didn’t respond, and Blaine just nodded, eager to get his husband back to their home.  Fifteen minutes of walking seemed like nothing now after going through days of it.

“S’weird wif’ou ‘uddin’ ‘ere.” Kurt mumbled around his gauze as they reached their home.

Blaine nodded in agreement.  It definitely was weird to not have Pudding come by to greet them as they returned.  She stayed outside for the most part, but always said hello.  Now there was no one.  

They stayed in the doorway for a moment once Blaine opened it for Kurt.  It was doubly weird, seeing this place that was their own after being away from it for so long.  Everything else had changed, yet this place looked the same as it always had.  Blaine wasn’t sure what he expected.  It wasn’t like the tornado hit this place, or that people they knew died in here.  They hadn’t fought in here, nor had they searched through this place to find what scraps they could to keep going.  

“‘un’na ‘ap.”  Kurt grunted finally, walking to their room.  A room they didn’t have to claim for their own for only one night before they moved onto the next place.  It was their room with their clothes and their furnishings.  

“Can I nap with you?”

Blaine was given a look that either was ‘are you for real?’ or ‘why are you even asking me that?’ by Kurt.  Thankfully things were made clear with a simple “‘ure.”

Clothes were dropped to the floor, and their bed, still made from the day Kurt must have left to go after Blaine, had the blanket drawn back so they could slip in.  Blaine insisted on making sure Kurt had two pillows propping him up so any bleeding in his mouth didn’t pool in his throat, and then wrapped an arm around Kurt’s waist.  It didn’t take him more than a minute to fall asleep.

There was only the occasional shuffling through the rest of the day and into the night as they slept.  Both their bodies needed the rest to heal, and since they had nowhere else to go or be, there was no need to get up save to relieve themselves and to change the blood soaked gauze in Kurt’s mouth.  Throughout it all, Blaine stayed affixed to Kurt in some way, usually with an arm slung around him or beneath him, but always with him.

Morning was quiet.  They both awoke and after changing the damned gauze once again, they washed one another with boiled water from Kurt’s stores below the floorboards.  He even had a piece of soap which they used up to get all the dredges of dirt and stale sweat off of them that had accumulated during their trek across the once-Canadian wilderness.  

“You’re just all muscle…”  Blaine muttered as he swiped the wet rag up and down Kurt’s naked back.  “I mean… you always have been… but it never ceases to amaze me.”

“‘Mm..”  was Kurt’s initial response before adding on, “‘o aw’ ‘oo.”

“I’m not all muscle… I’ve always had this little pouch on my gut that masquerades as abs…”  Blaine retorted with a snort.  “You though… you’re all hard lines and tone.  You’d have made a killing as a model if the Tides never happened.”

Silence was his response, a response he was all too used to and alright with.  Kurt never forced a response unless he absolutely had to, and with the packing in his mouth, Blaine couldn’t fault him for holding his tongue.  Add to that that Kurt never liked “what ifs” and Blaine was hardly surprised by the coolness he got.

They dressed in familiar, fresh clothing.  Blaine saw Kurt take the token from his old clothing and stick in into the pocket of his new clothing like he had with every change of clothing they had made on the way home.  He wasn’t going to ask though.  Not yet.  

Then they joined with their friends on the walk towards the hill for the meeting.  Santana had Eugene in her arms, who had already grown so much in the month he’d be gone.  She gushed over him, cooed down to him, and Brittany just smiled her way as if she hadn’t spent the first couple months of her son’s life despising him.  It was amazing how much of a recovery she seemed to have made overnight with Santana back, and almost worth all the pain and death surrounding the rescue.  Almost.

Mercedes and Sam walked close to them too.  Clearly his wife was already on top of Sam based on the fact that he was shaved, washed, and dressed with a girl in both arms as Mercedes babbled on about all that he had missed and that she was never letting him go off on any more adventures.

The Warbler’s yelled over from where they walked as a pack, waving towards Blaine who waved back.  Jeff was at the  center , talking animatedly as his cohorts listened to him.  He was definitely enjoying being the  center of attention as he spoke animatedly, hands gesturing around as he was reenacting some part of their quest with great vigor.

“Hey Blaine.  Kurt.”  Trent greeted them as they caught up with the pair, Isaac holding his dad’s hand while Kitty had Gwen on her hip.  “Good to see you both back.”

“Thanks man.  Survived without us well enough though I see.”

Trent chuckled at that while Kitty made a derisive snort.  “Could say that, but better to have you around I think.  Plus we were taking care of Eugene while you two were gone.  Glad to be down one kid for the moment.”

“For the moment.”  Kitty repeated, smugness in her tone.

“What does that mean?’  Blaine questioned, eyebrows drawing skyward.

“‘der ‘eg’ant a’ain.”  Kurt said plainly, eliciting a chuckle and a nod from both Trent and Kitty.

“Again?!  Gwen is only a year old!”  Blaine said as if he were protesting the fact.  How Kurt knew was beyond him, but Kurt always seemed to have a sixth sense about those things.

“She’s closer to two than she is to one now Blaine, and it’s not like I can keep my  hands off a wife like Kitty after all.”  Trent responded with a wink.

“Me-yow.” Kitty said, winking towards her husband.

“Good god…”  Blaine shook his head.  “Kurt and I will be the only childless ones in the whole community at this rate.”

“And good thing for it.  Someone needs to babysit when the rest of us need a break.”  

It felt good to be back around friends.  There was a normality to it.  The stress they had worn like capes for the past month seemed to shed away slowly with each normal exchange and predictable path they took.  

Most of the town was gathered on the hill as the survivors of the journey went to sit up at front.  Santana let Brittany take Eugene as she stood up, telling everyone about being captured by the  Others .  How more community members were taken.  How they were looking for something but no one could understand them.  How they slaughtered more than half the group and brought those that lived above the surface of the water.  How Kurt had shown up, been captured himself, and beaten.  Then she told them that the Others had been drawn away by something unknown and the group had managed to escape and return home.  Not a word about Kurt’s powers, nor his ability to understand the language of the  Others .  Nothing was said either about how people were selected to be killed in the original group of captives.  It made Kurt look like the rest of them.  It gave him the cloak of being normal.

Aside from sobbing resulting from the description of the deaths of their friends, the group bought it too.  Santana had given them enough without giving them it all, and clearly it was such an overwhelming amount of information that they all left peaceably, not asking for any clarifications or any other pressing questions.  They just accepted it.

“Thank you Santana…” Blaine said after most had left and they were talking quietly amongst themselves.

“I don’t mind doing the talking.”

“You know what I mean.”

Home again, changing the gauze again, and then shaving one another.  Kurt had grown a little bit of fuzz but it was nothing compared to the mountain man’s worth of beard that had accumulated on Blaine that had to be trimmed before a razor could be taken to it.

“We should nap after this.”

“‘e ‘us’ ‘oke uh’” Kurt grumbled, trying to focus on de-furring Blaine.

“I know we just woke up… but we need it.  Don’t tell me we don’t.  Besides, they’ll expect us to start work again before you know it and I’m quite happy to use this time as a vacation.”

He got an eyeroll in return, though Kurt did lead him off to the bed when he was shaved and crawled in beside him for a nap.  Blaine let his mind do a victory dance before falling asleep.

That was the course of their next few days.  Wake, relax with one another, visit with friends, nap, take a walk, nap, have supper, visit with friends again, and then go to bed.  

It was four days after their return when Blaine woke up to something unexpected, but certainly not unwelcome.

“Oh…. Kurt….”  He half-gasped, looking down through his lashes with sleep glossed eyes at his lover trailing kisses over his abdomen and to his already alert and eagerly pulsing cock which had clearly been awoken before the rest of him.

“Shh….”

Kurt has Blaine’s cock in one hand, the  other hand lubed and rubbing against the entrance to his too-long chaste ass.  Now that Kurt knew Blaine was awake he increased the tempo of everything - the stroke of his hand, the press of his kisses, and the massage of lubed fingers against his dusty, dark pucker.  Blaine could only vaguely recall the last time they made love, and didn’t even know when the last time he bottomed was.  It’s the one thing where Kurt truly gives up all his dominance, the only time he ever relinquishes all control to Blaine, so Blaine never questions Kurt’s preference for bottoming even if Blaine wished he could do it a little more.  

It seems that today was his lucky day though.  

Kurt’s long finger pressed up and into him, making Blaine burn from within.  He tensed automatically, then forced his body to relax knowing the sting would wear away into pleasure the looser he became.  One finger becomes two, then the two begin to scissor him out and stretch away the burn while Kurt gently licked and lapped over the length of his cock.  Blaine knew it would be too much to hope that Kurt will take him into his mouth though.  They’re past the days of gauzing, but there’s still healing to be done in Kurt’s mouth.

Blaine writhed on the bed, fingers grabbing and clutching the sheet on either side.  It’s Kurt doing all the work, but Blaine is sweating with little beads of sweat rolling off either side of his forehead and into his curls.  

He feels his mouth opening, but doesn’t seem to hear his words until after they’ve passed out of his mouth.  “Please, please angel… more.”  

Fingers are pulled out, leaving his hole gaping as his ass muscles grab at the air trying to figure out why it’s been left vacant.  It doesn’t have to wonder for long though as Kurt’s cock is lined up to it and then makes a slow slide into him until he’s wonderfully, overwhelmingly full, stretched beyond what he once thought was possible, and so utterly blissful.

“You know I don’t like being called that.”

Kurt pulls back and thrusts back into Blaine again, making them both moan in unison before Blaine can return playful barb.

“No.  You love it.”

What was slow becomes faster as Blaine stretches and Kurt starts to break into a frantic pace.  It’s been too long for both of them and Blaine didn’t want to push Kurt until he was ready, but now it seems like he waited too long the way Kurt is gasping and groaning in tandem while he snaps his hips forward with each half breath.  He knows where to find Blaine’s prostate and makes good use of the knowledge, rubbing his girth  over the spot with each thrust until Blaine is a shuddering, weakened mess below him and crying out incoherently as his stomach is coated in his own white spunk.

Kurt comes a minute later, buried right up inside of Blaine and collapsing on top of Blaine and into the already drying goo on his belly.  Both of them just pant and work to keep their heartbeats inside their ribs though, and Blaine coils his arms around Kurt and holds him close.  It’s another few minutes then before he can find it within himself to lean forward and gently kiss the top of Kurt’s head, murmuring that they’d better clean themselves up before all the sweat and cum dry on them.

“I do like angel.”  Kurt admits when they’re washing each other over, looking away as if he’s ashamed of the fact.

“I know.”  

“I just don’t think I am.”

“You are though.”  Blaine says with a shake of his head, wincing as he plucks off a hard piece of cum off his stomach and ends up pulling a hair out with it.

“I’m not.  In fact I’m officially twenty five percent demon.”

Blaine sighs.  He has a feeling he’ll be having this conversation until they’re old and  gray , so he decides to hold firm and make clear what is truth for him.  “Whatever you are to  others or even yourself, you’ll always be an angel to me.”

  
  
  
  



	31. Chapter 29: The Plagues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this chapter. As I've noted on tumblr (where you can follow me in my not-so-exciting life), I'm a teacher and I now have a week left of school. This is the most insane time for teachers, and I barely have time to write, let along breathe sometimes. Thanks for your comments, which keep me going, and your support. Remember! Reviews feed authors so we can be healthy and continue writing!

Rain didn't come.  Even after all they had been through, the heavens still refused to open up over them and give them a bit of a break.  Bit by bit Blaine could see the toll it had taken on the community.  People looks grubbier from not washing as much.  Hell, some people outright stunk.  Everyone looked more worn down.  Kurt stopped hunting.

"The animals have migrated away... There's nothing for them around here to eat or drink..." He had explained after coming home empty handed for the seventh day in a row.  Not even the snares and traps were catching anything.  Odder still was that there had been barely any birds passing overhead since their return home.   Even before they had left, when things were still dry, Kurt could still shoot down a bird a two a day to help with the food supply.

There hadn't been as many births to the livestock this year either, which Blaine accounted to the animals knowing when their resources were strained.  What was sadder still was the rumours that people were talking about slaying their dogs for meat if it came to it.

"It's insane.  We have a good rationing system.  So long as things pick up next spring then we'll be fine.  Why is everyone immediately going to the darkest reaches of their minds?!"  He asked rhetorically to Kurt one evening.  Blaine knew why.  These were people who had already lost their world in their lifetime due to the Others.  They had lost family, friends, their sense of innocence, their hopes and dreams.  It was easier to prepare for the worst than to hope for the best.

Kurt spent his days tinkering on old vehicles in lieu of hunting.  The side of their home becoming something reminiscent of a junkyard with all the pipes and pieces of engines laying around.  Blaine couldn't name half the stuff out there, but it seemed to give Kurt a purpose and some kind of enjoyment.  His old ATV was among the vehicles parked beside the cabin, the once bright yellow paint worn with weather and age.  Looking at it filled him with nostalgia, thoughts of days spent riding free, but days he'd happily given up in favour of the simple domesticity he had now with Kurt, drought or not.

Blaine tried to occupy his time caring for the livestock the community had, which included trying to gather dried grass and leaves for the animals to eat.  Without the rain, the ground had become dry and cracked, and the grass followed suite.  Usually by the end of summer it was up to his waist in height, trying to tickle his sides as it snuck up his shirts.  This year it barely curled around his ankles in angry brown coils.  

Water rations were periodically reduced.  Every time it happened people screamed bloody murder in the streets and declared that end times were near.  It was amazing how people became more religious the more desperate they felt about their existence, and, according to Kitty, the church was packed on Sundays now.  Blaine had never gone, and he knew Kurt didn't believe in that stuff at all, but he had to wonder what kind of solace people found in that place that seemed to calm them down enough to survive another week without going on the rampage.  

Trent did note that as people became more involved in the church, they became less interested in borrowing books from the library.  It perplexed him to no end.

"Why wouldn't you want to lose yourself in a good piece of fiction when things seem tough?"

Blaine couldn't give him an answer to that.

One of the small blessings since their return was that people were less frigid towards Kurt.  The wounds he had suffered at the hands of the Others in the attempt to rescue the lost community members seemed to redeem him in the eyes of many.  Maybe they finally saw that he wasn’t some spy for the Others, or that at least he wasn’t against them.  Whatever it was, when Beth ran to him not long after returning and hugged him in the middle of the street, Quinn and Noah didn’t rush to pull her away.  Kurt had savoured that hug.  Blaine could see it in the way his body tensed at first and then melted as he returned the affection to the girl who was rapidly growing into her teenage years.  

“I’m glad you’re safe.”  She had told him as she pulled away finally, smiling at him before skipping back to her parents, waiting across the road.  Kurt watched as they walked away after that and murmured so only Blaine could hear.

“Maybe there are such things as miracles….”

 

* * *

"Unca' Blaine!  Froggies!"  Isaac yelled at Blaine one day as he was walking towards his home after working the fields, collecting what bits of vegetation he could to feed the animals.

It wasn't something Blaine expected to hear, but, sure enough, when Isaac ran his way and opened up his hands there was a little green frog encased in them.

"Wow Isaac... Where'd you find him?  Frogs usually stay near water."  Blaine noted and he knelt down to examine the slimy looking creature contently croaking in Isaac's dirty palms.

"Lots by my house!  Come see!"  

Blaine rushed after the small boy, coming upon Trent and Kitty's home and letting his eyes inflate as he took in the scene before him.  Saying there were lots was an understatement.  He pinched himself with a wince to make sure he wasn't dreaming as he took in the sea of brown and green composed of hopping frogs who seemed intent on making their way towards the town.  By her door, Kitty was working on grabbing the frogs by their legs and dropping them into a canvas sack that was moving and pulsing from the creatures caught inside trying to escape.

"Frogs legs are delicious." She explained to Blaine when she saw him staring, letting his stomach sour at the thought of consuming such gross little things.

"Momma said I can keep this one as my pet!"  Isaac declared up at Blaine, having to yell to be heard over the croaking.

"How? Why?"  Blaine uttered and then shook his head.  Kitty wouldn't have the answers to this pseudo miracle, he thought to himself.

"Kurt's catching a batch by your place too Blaine.  Enjoy the new delicacy."

His stomach tightened, but his must have been the only one to have that reaction because the rest of the town celebrated the arrival of the frogs, scooping them up in much the same way Kitty had been when Blaine had seen her and having a special dinner that evening.  Try as he might though, Kurt just couldn't make it appealing to Blaine.

"I spiced them up. They'll just taste like chicken wings."  Kurt had said in an attempt to have Blaine eat the little croakers.

"Sorry... I'll stick to my dry bread."

The frogs didn't move on though once they had invaded the town, and what had been a blessing at first quickly became a nuisance as people had to fight to get frogs out of their beds, their homes, and even their laps when they sat down.  Frog legs became a regular menu item, and still Blaine couldn't stomach the thought of eating them, even though people were consuming them madly now in the hopes they'd get rid of them faster than they seemed to be populating the town.  A task easier thought out than actually achieved.  It didn't seem to matter how many frogs they slaughtered though as new ones always seemed to hop into their place.

"Where do you think they all came from?" Sam asked one evening when they were having him, Mercedes, and the girls over for dinner.

"Jeff figures that there was some marshland southeast of here that must have been destroyed somehow.  Wouldn't be shocked if it were Others spooking them somehow as they tried to get into our safety bubble."  Kurt offered up in explanation, leading Blaine to wonder when his husband and Jeff had become such good buddies.

"Well I don't know if we should thank 'em or curse them harder."  Mercedes huffed, gnawing on a frog leg bone while a rogue frog hopped over her as Kurt tried to shoo it out with a broom.

"Personally, I'm hoping they irritate a wild band of pigs next.  Bacon would be a nice touch to our menu."  Sam said before smacking the frog out of his lap where it had tried to seek refuge from the broom.

"Santana says she figures they have a hold on huge population now."  Kurt added in.  “Besides, they can’t really reproduce without water… and our water is all contained.”

"Mmm... Well at least we had a good week of full meals in the meantime."

The frogs did die off over the next week, aside from a few stubborn holdouts that seemed to be happy to exist and annoy under floorboards where they would croak all day and all night long.  Blaine was just glad that frog wasn’t on the menu as much and he could get his protein needs filled with beans and jerky again.

Since returning, Kurt hadn’t been watching the kids as much.  It was partly due to the limited amount of work their parents had to undertake given the drought, partly because no one dared go on runs anymore, and partly because it had taken a little while before his legs and arms healed up.  So when Kitty showed up on their doorstep one morning pleading with Kurt to watch Isaac, Blaine was confused since Isaac had started in Rachel and Finn’s class a couple months earlier.

“Doesn’t he have school today?”

“There’s a lice outbreak among the kids.  One kid got it, and now a whole bunch of them do.  I treated I don’t know how many cases yesterday at the clinic after you left.  It’s disgusting.  I don’t want him getting it.  Trent has to watch the library, and Gwen has been sniffly so I don’t want to risk Isaac getting a cold either if I can help it.”

Kurt agreed of course, happy to have a companion for the day.  Blaine watched, smile on his face, as Kurt led Isaac over the engines and vehicles at the side of the house and explained how he would be teaching Isaac all about motors today.

He wished he and Kurt could have their own child to spend all their hours with, and he wished he could spend the day watching Kurt with Isaac.  Kurt was always more relaxed, and more blissful when he had a child to care for.

However, Blaine was in the clinic that morning, and true to Kitty’s word, there was a lice epidemic.  Kids and adults alike came in for help from Blaine and Mike, who did their best to clean out the nits and eggs using measures recommended in several of the textbooks they had - including wet combing, and heating the head with blow dryers (which meant pulling out and using the generators usually reserved for powering the x-ray machine). 

They recommended shaving heads, much to the chagrin of the young ladies they worked on, and having anyone else with long hair tie it back in ponytails or tight braids.  

“People aren’t cleaning themselves as well as they used to before the drought.”  Mike lamented as they shared a short break between cleaning heads.

Blaine nodded in agreement.  The lack of water for sanitation was taking its toll.  He was glad he and Kurt lived out of the main town because he’d read that living in close proximity to others increased the spread of lice.  Many of the infected were neighbours who’d probably had the lice jump from person to person.  Regardless of the reason, Blaine knew he was going to use up most of his daily water rations cleaning himself silly before he went home to Kurt.  He didn’t want to end up with an irritated, lice ridden husband if he could help it.  

Trent didn’t open the library during the lice infestation, staying home with the kids after that day while Kitty and Blaine spent their time at the clinic for all the daily wet combing and scalp heating treatments that needed to be delivered.  With school on hold until the lice issue was contained, the library was woefully underused anyhow.  Sam shaved his head as a precaution since he patrolled with several people whose kids were affected, and Santana had her hair pulled back in a tight braid for the same reason.  Kurt only came into town to take care of the generators which were being used consistently, warning the medics that they were old and could only take so much.  Otherwise he stayed away, telling Blaine that lice gave him the heebie-jeebies and he didn’t want to risk being close to them.  

Blaine couldn’t fault him for that.  They were disgusting little things, and Blaine would be happy to see them go.  

It seemed like the community was bound for calamity though, because as soon as the lice issue began to clear up, they were swarmed by another problem.

Literally, swarmed.

There had been a buzzing in the middle of the night, and in the morning flies were everywhere.  Giant, black things that invaded everything even more than the frogs had managed to do.  At first they had just annoyed the livestock, but then they spread throughout the town until precautions were put in place to make sure they didn’t get into buildings.  Mosquito netting was put up in front of windows and doors.  Homemade fly traps were made and hung up on building overhangs, covered in minutes with wiggling little black bugs.  Where they had been able to keep the lice contained to town though, the flies thrived in the grasses by Kurt and Blaine’s home, resulting in them hastily adding more clay between the cracks in the wood of their house to keep the flies from getting in while they stayed inside as much as they could to avoid the irritating insects.

Not that it stopped the incessant buzzing from getting in and making it difficult to sleep.

With that in mind, they had both taken to sleeping with headphones in, connected to their phone collection.  Blaine was never so glad for anything as was about collecting those things.  It made him happy, but it gave Kurt peace he never seemed to be able to do by his lonesome.  They were worth their weight in gold.

While Blaine, and most everyone with with a rational mind, was sure these little problems that had come through the town were just coincidences caused by drought related problems, some people had thoughts of their own.

“It’s a second coming!”  Screamed one man in the street as flies besieged him.

“That’s the second time I’ve heard someone say that today…”  Mike hummed towards Blaine with a shake of his head.  “What are they talking about?”

“Well… their referencing is kind of off, but there was a story in the old testament about the plagues that visited the Egyptians… frogs, lice, and flies among them.”  Trent supplied, in for his yearly check-up on his leg.

Mike shook his head at that, disregarding it with a snort and a roll of his eyes.  Blaine chuckled and gave his own head a shake.  “Well I guess we’ll know if it really is some kind of “second coming” if we end up with the livestock dying off or hail or one of those other plagues.”

He had meant it as a joke.  He really did.  So when Mercedes burst into the clinic a few days later demanding his attention because the livestock were falling down dead for no reason that she could see, Mike shot Blaine a glance that brought him back to the short conversation they had had about the plagues.

Sure enough, half the livestock was down, already stinking up the area around their corpses as the dry heat cooked their carcusses.  The workers were trying to get the unaffected livestock away from the felled bodies of cows, sheep, rabbits, and chickens, but Blaine watched in horror as several fell to the ground with no warning while he investigated the bodies on the ground.

“Near as I can figure, it’s some kind of poison…”  Blaine said with a sad shake of his head, knowing well what the depletion in the livestock meant for the wellbeing of the community.  “I’m going to take blood samples and tissue samples and check them out under the microscopes at the clinic.  See if I can match them up to something in one of the books.  In the meantime… burn these bodies.  We can’t risk feeding them to people if there is something in them that could hurt our people.”

Blaine couldn’t find a match in the textbooks.

“There are a lot of other diseases and illnesses that could have affected the animals…”  Mike offered as Blaine sighed and rubbed his eyes.  “We only have the one microbiology book after all…”

Blaine shook his head.  “Could be… but we have enough panic and people upset as it is.  We need answers to make people calm Mike… what if the flies or the frogs or lice brought in something?  What if people start dropping next?”

Mike frowned and looked away, giving Blaine no solace.

He didn’t get any from Kurt either, who looked genuinely perplexed when Blaine told him about the biblical plagues and how they were lining up with what was going on.

“What happened after the livestock died in the story?” Kurt asked quietly, eyes locked on Blaine with worry.  Surely Kurt wasn’t actually buying into the idea that the plagues were being visited upon them?  Kurt was more skeptical about those kind of things than Mike was.

“Uh.. well… boils, hail storms…. locusts killing the crops… darkness… and death of the firstborn sons.”

“Death?”

Blaine nodded.

“Oh…”

They had sex after that conversation.  Kurt initiated it and Blaine didn’t complain, even if he did feel like something was amiss about it all.  Talking about biblical plagues shouldn’t be a turn on for Kurt as far as he was concerned.

Trent scoured the library when Blaine had come to him the next day, asking for help in trying to discern what was going on with the animals.  If there was anyone else who was good with finding answers, it was Trent, and soon Blaine was stocked up with books on animal health and diseases.

“It’s got to be the flies….”  Blaine mused to Mike as he peered through one book in the medical clinic.  “.... there’s a lot of diseases that have been transmitted by insects….”

“Most of those are in Africa… and not flies….”  Mike murmured, reading over his shoulder.

Blaine shrugged, “Yeah, okay, in this chart it shows that… but I read….”  He reached and grabbed another book he had gone through earlier to show Mike the page, “... here.  Flies eat on decaying matter and can spread bacteria because they carry it and then it rubs off on whatever they land on next… plus, there’s piles of dead flies on the ground out there.  The animals could be consuming them inadvertently with their other food, and the chickens are more than happy to eat bugs….”

Mike nodded, “It’s a definite possibility.  In fact… the lice could have been carrying something too… they got into the livestock too..”

Blaine nodded in agreement.  “It makes sense.  Plus it gives us something to tell everyone at the least and a plan.  We just have to ensure the surviving animals eat unaffected grasses….”

“Easier said than done.”

“But it’s a start anyhow.”

Satisfied with their findings, Mike and Blaine directed Mercedes and her workers on isolating the surviving livestock and burning out the areas where the other animals had died to kill any lingering remains of the disease.  With their herds at less than an eighth of their original numbers, the deaths seemed to stop, and Blaine gave himself a mental pat on the back for figuring something out that helped, finally.

“Chickens were hit the hardest…”  He told Kurt, laying back in bed after a sweaty romp.  “Which sort of confirmed it all for everyone.  We have enough cows left to keep providing milk, albeit at a much reduced rate until I can breed them in the spring, and we’ll have to breed some new horses too.”

Kurt nodded, rubbing sweat away from his forehead with the back of his arm.  Sex was a quick event these days, the heat making taking their time unbearable.  Even so, they still managed to become slick in it.  “How are food supplies doing?”

“They’re checking that over….. how was your day anyhow?”

Kurt shrugged his shoulders up a touch, glancing up at the ceiling as he recounted his day.  “Checked up on all the kids… Isaac helped me rebuild an engine - he’s a quick study that one… Eugene is growing so quickly… and Brittany’s really come around.  I would never have thought that Santana would be such a stabilizing force in someone’s life… The twins seem to be making up their own language that’s driving Sam up the wall… checked the traps and snares… nothing there….”

Blaine continued to listen, though his eyes drifted away from Kurt and towards the little bronze coin that the white-eyed Other had left for Kurt.  It was sitting on Kurt’s night table.

“What’s that?”  Blaine asked finally, interrupting Kurt.

Kurt blinked and followed Blaine’s eyes to the coin sitting there.  It hadn’t been there earlier that day when Blaine had left, so obviously Kurt had brought it out at some point.

“It’s… you saw what it was… then…”

Blaine shook his head.  “But why did he… she… it?  give it to you?  Why do you keep it?”

Kurt sighed softly, glancing away from Blaine, “I… do you trust me Blaine?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then… trust me on this… I’ll tell you when I’m ready….”

It wasn’t an answer that satisfied Blaine’s curiosity, but it was one that would have to do.  He loved Kurt, and definitely trusted him.   He just hoped Kurt trusted him enough one day to tell him Blaine what it was and why he kept it close.

There was a knock on the door then, prompting Kurt to sit up and pull on his clothing as he yelled “Just a minute!”

Blaine followed suite, the conversation stilled with the interruption.  “Are we expecting someone?”

Kurt shook his head as he stood up, “No.”

Blaine walked after Kurt to the door.  When it was opened, they were greeted with Sam and Mercedes, each holding a girl in their hands and looking utterly lost.

“What’s wrong?” Kurt asked, stepping back to allow them in.

“The girls… they have fevers….”

That meant Blaine was up.  He took Whitney out of Mercedes’ arms and winced at the heat radiating off of her.  “Oh yeah…. Kurt, can you grab some water and some rags?  Let’s get these girls to the living room….”

The parents obeyed, and Kurt was quick to gather what Blaine needed, including the little medical pack he kept at home, and also hovered over Blaine as he took Whitney and Aretha’s vitals before undressing them so he could check their diapers.

That’s when he sucked in a breath.

“When did they get these?”  He asked, looking up at Sam and Mercedes who shook their heads in unison.

“I… I thought it was just a diaper rash…”  Mercedes whimpered, leaning against Sam who quickly wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her in, whispering that it wasn’t her fault.

“Are those..” Kurt murmured, stopping and looking at Blaine with wide eyes as he sought clarification.

“Boils…”  Blaine sighed softly as he looked at the red bumps with yellow bulges on the girls bums and thighs.  “They’re boils…”


	32. Chapter 30: Part II Ends

Blaine had been having a perfectly good dream.  Something about being in a city and seeing a movie like nothing had ever happened, like the Others had never arrived, and then he was pulled out of it.

Not that he minded the way he was pulled from it.

His eyes fluttered open and he glanced down to confirm that he was really waking up the way he thought he was, and, sure enough, there was Kurt, nestled between his legs and bobbing his head up and down over Blaine’s already awake cock.

Well, this had to be the best way to wake up ever.

He moaned, alerting Kurt to his consciousness, and arched his hips up.  Never in all their years together had Kurt ever gone down on him first thing in the morning.  Given the limited sanitation they had out here, it was a wonder Kurt went down on Blaine at all.  No matter how hard Blaine tried to keep himself clean there, he always felt like it wasn’t good enough and was sure that after a hard day of work he had to reek down there.  Add to that how he was naturally furry, and, well, Kurt doing this to him was like the ultimate declaration of unconditional love.

“Oh…. angel….”  

He saw Kurt’s eyes snap up to meet his own, never stopping his movements, watching Blaine’s response to what he was doing to him.  Each lick, each press of his lips, it was all purposeful.  Kurt was doing it all to see Blaine’s reaction.

And react he did.  Blaine had always been sensitive, and he’d had so many wet dreams about waking up this way that it heightened the sensations.  He was a moaning, writhing mess within moments of waking, and Kurt was relentless, sucking him like he had been poisoned and the antidote would come out of Blaine’s dick.

Which it did, not a minute later.  He didn’t have the chance to warn Kurt, who took it all in stride, and Blaine mentally thanked whatever gods might exist for endowing Kurt with a strong gag reflex because his lover drank it all down before releasing Blaine’s cock with a lewd pop of his lips and crawling up the bed to lay beside him.

“I… I should…. you….”  Blaine was too dizzy and taken aback to form a coherent sentence, though Kurt seemed to understand.

“It’s okay.  I was…. taking care of that too.”

Blaine’s eyes rolled to the side to look at Kurt, blue eyes twinkling and cheeks flushing bashfully.  Then he glanced down the length of Kurt’s body where his cock hung limp and Kurt was wiping the remnants of his own release on the sheet behind him.  The thought of Kurt jerking himself off while blowing Blaine made Blaine groan in sheer delight.

Blaine rolled onto his side, facing Kurt, and wrapped his arms around him, pulling him tightly against him, chest to chest.  There were no words, no actions, that could explain just how much he felt for Kurt in that moment.  All Blaine could do was hope that by letting Kurt feel how intensely his heart was beating that it could somehow convey to Kurt just how much he loved him.

Usually when Blaine held Kurt in the mornings like this, it would only take a minute or two before Kurt pulled away, citing the need to get breakfast ready or wash up or do any number of things that allowed him to be free and mobile.  Blaine had long ago accepted that Kurt was never terribly comfortable just laying down and being.  He had to be doing something to feel alright with himself.

But this morning he stayed, pulling Blaine’s body just as close to his own as Blaine was trying to do with his.  He stayed, and he held fast.

“What’s wrong?”

Kurt shook his head where it rested against Blaine’s shoulder.  “Nothing.”

“Don’t… -”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

Blaine sighed, and despite knowing better, he just continued to hold onto Kurt for as long as he’d let him.  It would do no good to argue if Kurt wasn’t going to be forthcoming.  

The boils that they had seen on the twins had spread and seemed to affect the young and the elderly worst of all. Blaine and the medics had treated a steady stream of affected for the past week.  They were nasty little things, causing fevers and aches, and they were disgusting to tend to.  Half the time Blaine had to pop them to allow the infection to drain, and then wrap them up to prevent reinfection.  For the most part, that had stemmed the spread of something that wasn’t supposed to be contagious according to all the medical textbooks they had.

The twins were better now at least, treated early enough and tended to religiously enough for the boils they had suffered to clear up over the course of a couple days.  The worst part of it though was that the boils, if large enough, would leave scars.  This was particularly upsetting for a couple young ladies who had them on their faces.  Upsetting, but not the end of the world.

At least not to Blaine or the other medics anyhow.  After everything else that had happened, the boils had seemed to cement the notion that they were in an apocalyptic time for many.  The priest had never been busier, and according to Kitty, people who had never attended church before were now in its doors every day, hoping to make up for lost time as they anticipated the end times.

“It’s ridiculous.”  Blaine grumbled with a shake of his head as he inventoried their rapidly depleting stock of gauze.

Mike shrugged, “It’s a lot of coincidence, sure.  I don’t think there’s anything religious about it… but it does seem a little too… convenient.”

“What does that mean?”

Again Mike shrugged in that offhand way he did, “What if it’s the Others trying to scare us?”

“What would be the point?”  Blaine huffed, closing the door to the cupboard and handing the inventory clipboard over to Mike who arched a brow as he read it over.  “They can’t get in.  Why scare us?”

“Maybe to force us out.  If we keep going at the rate we have been, we won’t have supplies to speak of and we’ll either have to survive without them or go on risky runs to get them… where they could get to us.”

Blaine sighed.  That seemed feasible.  Gauze was one thing, something they could manufacture or find a replacement for.  What they couldn’t do without though was the drugs they relied on to numb patients for procedures, the painkillers to help people though, and, in a couple extreme cases, the anti-psychotics that kept individuals functioning enough to be contributing citizens.  

“There are still places in our safety radius we could go to search for things….”

“All those places have been torn apart by now Blaine… there’s not a stitch of anything usable from them at this point.  We need to look at Kitty’s horticulture closer I think… see if we can’t replace some of what we’re using with things we could grow…”

“With what water Mike?  The crops aren’t even growing right now… we have no water to spare on cultivating plants for our experimental purposes….”

Another shrug.  “Sacrifices have to be made.”

“Sacrifices have already been made.”

“Guys!  Guys!  Storm clouds!  Rain clouds!”

Both Mike and Blaine looked up as Kitty, wide again around her hips as her latest pregnancy was showing, burst in pointing excitedly outside with both hands.  It took them no less than a second to follow her back out where they stared in wonder at the distant dark clouds that seemed to be moving towards them.  Down the street, every other member of the community was stopping and looking as well, some cheered to the advancing weather system, while others began to cry and wail.

“This is good!”

“Not if you know about the biblical plagues Blaine…”

Blaine looked over at Kitty, who quickly filled him in.

“Those people who think that end times are coming believe that the next plague will be some kind of horrendous fire and hail storm…”

“Oh…”

So this would be what would decide once and for all if what the community had been suffering was merely terrible coincidences or some message from a god he didn’t believe in.

He left the clinic immediately, rushing to home where he reunited with Kurt, watching the same clouds roll in that everyone else had been from the center of a dismantled engine on the ground.

“Blaine…”

They clutched each other’s hands, watching steadily, holding their breaths as the darkness moved closer, clouds rolling in grey waves towards the community torturously slow.  Could clouds really rain down fire?  Scientifically it didn’t make any sense at all.  Clouds were masses of liquid or frozen water.  But, science wasn’t very good at explaining how boils had been spreading, why frogs had bounced through in hoards, or why the Others were capable of magic.

“Inside Blaine.”

Kurt led him into the house without waiting for a response.  Blaine was sure it was because Kurt would have preferred the safety of watching from one of the windows, but he found himself instead led to their bed where Kurt made short work of his own clothing before stripping a dumbfounded Blaine of his own.

“Why…. what?”

“If this is the end, I’m not watching it come to me.  I want to die doing something I enjoy.”

Blaine couldn’t dig up a reason to argue with that, letting Kurt once again take the lead and drowning in Kurt’s body as the crackle of thunder was heard and the wind hit against the house, whistling through any cracks it could find.  All of it just accented the pulsing of his body against Kurt’s though, making everything seem more intense, more real than it already was.  

They held onto one another afterwards, breath coming in short, choking pants, and listened to the sky as it snapped overhead.  Kurt clutched onto Blaine so tightly that Blaine was forced to consider that Kurt might actually be buying into the fear of the end, and was scared himself.  Even now though, Blaine wasn’t worried.  Nervous, yes.  Anxious, yes.  But he wasn’t concerned about some silly old story about how some god had punished a group for enslaving another group.  It didn’t make any sense in the context of what the community was about.  They had neither enslaved anyone nor were the enslaved.  At best it was Other trickery.  Trickery he would not fall for.

Neither he nor Kurt could ignore the sound of banging against the house though.  Together they got up, slipped on boxers, and held hands as they crept out of the bedroom and into the main room where there was a window they could look out of.

“Hail…” Kurt murmured, eyes wide as he stared at the thick, white pellets shooting against the side of the house and all over the ground.

“See… no fire.  Crazy religious nuts.”  Blaine chuckled, almost breaking into a laugh.  Maybe he had been a little bit worried after all.

“Yeah… and it’ll melt into water…. we should put out some buckets and bins to collect it in.”  Kurt added on excitedly, rushing into their storage to grab all the pots they had.

Heading outside was rough, and Blaine was pelted with a few balls of hail that was sure to leave him with bruises as he and Kurt set out the pots.  It would be worth it though, even to just have a thorough wash with what came of the hail.  Maybe they were getting a bit of a break after all, even if it meant that the house would need some repairs where some larger gobs of hail had hit it hard enough to crack the wood.

Kurt laughed too.

Blaine hadn’t heard it in awhile, so he just smiled and listened to the sweet sound, squeezing Kurt’s hand gently as they watched the hail bounce off the ground and house.  It went on for hours like that, until the ground was a white, clumpy mess and they had to push furniture up against holes that were made in the walls while avoiding the holes made in the ceiling.  They had wood to fix it up with though.  The source of water would be worth it.

Not everyone in the community agreed.  Once the hail passed, and Blaine was able to return to the community in his winter boots, he found that more people were seeing the hail storm was further confirmation of their doom rather than the salvation they had been waiting for.  Instead of collecting the balls of hail which could be be stored for water, people instead flocked to the church where an impromptu prayer service began, leaving the few who had sense outside trying to get as much hail into water barrels before it melted and soaked into the dirt.  

Blaine and Mike shirked their medic duties to collect the water, casting wary glances towards the choruses that rang out from inside the church periodically with shakes of their heads.  They didn’t need to tell one another that they thought that madness was spreading, even if it wasn’t one of the prescribed plagues.

At home Kurt had done much the same, using every bowl and pot and bucket and pail he could find to collect the hail in where it melted.  When Blaine returned home that evening, he was met with the sight of his lover stripped down, pots of water boiling over the fire pit, and washing himself thoroughly.

“Gorgeous…”

Kurt snickered and held a sponge out to Blaine.  “You too.”

Blaine complied with no argument, washing up as Kurt trimmed their hair and then shaved Blaine’s beard off.  It had been a long while since he had felt so clean, and he was even more impressed to find that Kurt had used some of the water while he was gone to wash their sheets and blankets.

“God… luxury…”  Blaine moaned as he nestled into the fresh smelling bed.

That earned him another little laugh from Kurt who crawled in beside him.  “Is it?”

“Now that you’re here… yup.”

“Sap.”

Whatever prompted it - his words or the gift from the sky, Kurt again initiated sex.  Blaine was sure he had never had sex this much in a week before.  His dick ached and he wished he was younger, able to spring to attention and come easily like he had been able to when he was young with only his hand to deal with it.  Kurt seemed insatiable, and Blaine wasn’t planning to complain about it, but he was confused as to why Kurt seemed so intent on draining every last ounce of semen from him.  

“How many theoretical plagues are there left?” Kurt asked the next day to Kitty, one of the few religious people in town who actually seemed to think that all the others were overreacting.

“Three.  Locusts, darkness….”

She got quiet after that and swallowed as she glanced to Isaac, who was holding Eugene under Santana’s careful watch.

“Death of the firstborn…”

“Don’t worry.”  Kurt hummed, following her gaze and setting a hand on her shoulder.  “It won’t happen.  Everyone will be fine.”

“I hope so… I mean, I’ve read the stuff where scientists have tried to account for what might have caused those plagues back in biblical times.  They said firstborns probably died because they were exposed to illness by being given priority on food and that after the locusts and the livestock deaths… but… what if…”

Trent clasped his hand on Kitty’s other shoulder.  “Won’t happen sweetie.  We won’t let it.”

The morose tone of the conversation became too much for Blaine, so he handled it in the best way he knew how.  Grabbing a blanket and covering it over himself, he crawled into the center of the floor and declared himself “The blob!” with a playful growl.  It was a game he had played ever since Isaac could toddle on two feet and one that earned him a shriek of appreciation from the little boy and a laugh from everyone else who watched as Isaac and Gwen worked together to try and wrestle down “the blob”.  Even Whitney and Aretha helped, batting at Blaine’s arms and gurgling joyfully.  He couldn’t be a dad, but he could at least be the fun uncle.

The best part was having the blanket pulled off his face long enough to catch a glimpse of Kurt watching the scene, smiling the biggest and brightest smile Blaine had ever seen on his face.  Gorgeous didn’t even begin to describe it.

The sex they had that night was insane, and by morning Blaine wondered if his ass, Kurt’s ass, or either of their cocks would ever recover.  The sheets were no longer fresh and clean to say the least.

“So.  I hear locusts have been considered a delicacy in some parts of the world.”  Blaine joked as he limped into the clinic.

Mike just shook his head and rolled his eyes while Carole wagged a finger his way.  “You need to joke less about that sort of thing Blaine.  You don’t have a firstborn son to worry about.”

It was a scolding he deserved, but wasn’t expecting.  He uttered a weak “sorry” to Carole and clamped his mouth shut.  He had forgotten she was a mother and hopeful one-day grandmother.  Finn was everything to her, and even the slightest of threats against his well being inflamed her.  

“You shouldn’t have said something like that around her.”  Kurt said with a shake of his head later in the day as Blaine recounted the incident.

“I know that now…” Blaine lamented with a sigh, curling up against Kurt on the couch.

Their conversation was interrupted by buzzing, and instead of being surprised at this point, Kurt and Blaine just looked at one another before standing up and looking out the now cracked window.  

Brown and yellow clouds passed by, distorting their view of anything beyond.  Beside him Blaine heard Kurt gag at the sight, and then again when a rogue locust hit the window leaving a gooey, yellow mess in its wake.  They were headed towards the crops, and Blaine’s stomach dropped as he realized that there was now too many coincidences to ignore.  He had to accept that there was more at play here than a shitty summer.

“What the hell do they want from us?!”  Blaine snapped, turning away from the window and flinging his hands up into the air.

“...who?”

“The Others!  There’s no other way this could be happening… one thing after another…. they can’t get through your forcefield or whatever it is so they send in these… these…. omens… plagues…. whatever you want to call them.  What the hell do they hope to accomplish?”

Kurt’s hands found their way onto Blaine’s back and Blaine melted back against them, allowing himself to be wrapped by by Kurt’s arms.  It was there that he felt the most secure, and the rage that had been bubbling up dissipated.

“They… they just want to show their power.”  Kurt said quietly once Blaine was calm and snug in his hold.

“Well they have… they did it over a decade ago when they killed off our families and everything we knew.  Did they think we needed a reminder?”

Kurt didn’t respond to the question, meant to be rhetorical anyhow, and just brushed his fingers through Blaine’s hair as both men kept their eyes averted from the window and the swarms passing their home with the intent to destroy what little had managed to grow that year.  There was no point in going out to try and hold them off.  They had nothing to fight something like that with.

“Two more left… darkness and death..”  Blaine murmured when the buzzing had died down and the cloud of bugs could only be seen in the distance where they were no doubt consuming what small amount of crops the community had.

“It won’t come to that Blaine.” Kurt assured him, lifting a floorboard and pulling out a small tin that Blaine knew contained the coffee beans Kurt was saving.

“How do you know that Kurt?  Really?  How?  Because now I’m actually starting to freak out…. Isaac… Eugene… firstborn sons… and what if it’s not contained to just the boys?  What about the twins?  What about Beth?  What about so many others around here?”  Blaine ranted as he watched Kurt grind the beans down using a rolling pin before dumping them into a pot of water he had set to boil.

“I won’t let anyone die Blaine.”

So calm, so cool, so… sure of things.  Blaine just shook his head as he watched Kurt make his coffee, a special and too rare treat.  How could he know?  Blaine had been so sure everyone else had been wrong about the plagues, and now he was considering going to that damned church and confessing his sins.. or whatever the hell they did there.  He needed some kind of real affirmation that everything would be okay.  

“How do you think they’ll cause darkness?”

Kurt shook his head, handing Blaine a mug of coffee.  “Not sure.  Guess we’ll see.”

“How can you be so okay with this?  You love those kids almost as much, if not more, than their parents Kurt… why aren’t you more worried?”  Blaine asked finally, just holding the mug as he looked over at his husband.

Kurt looked over the rim of his mug as he sipped, regarding Blaine quietly before pulling the mug away from his lips.  “Because I have the power to make everything okay.”

His eyebrows jumped up, and Blaine continued to stare at Kurt, though now with unadulterated shock.  “What?”

“I can fix all this.”

“Wh-... How?”

Kurt shook his head once again, looking down into the brown liquid and bringing the mug back to his lips after whispering, “Just… I promise… I’ll tell you in the morning.  Please let me enjoy tonight.”

Blaine gawked for a moment, then looked out the window, through the cracks from the hail and the smeared goo from the locusts and drank his coffee, wondering just how Kurt could make all of what had gone on alright.  If he even had that power… why didn’t he use it before?  Why didn’t he stop people from getting hurt or letting the livestock die?  Why now?  Why at the last minute?  This wasn’t one of those bloody “cut the wire” scenes from a cop movie after all.  This was their lives.  They didn’t need to wait until the last minute and let all the stress and fear accumulate to draw out the tension from an audience.

Kurt led the way into the bedroom once they had finished off his coffee, and at first Blaine thought about refusing the sex he knew was going to happen because he was sure his cock was getting chapped and the heat that came with the end of summer made every unnecessary movement completely exhausting.  But then Kurt got naked in front of him, and any hope of Blaine being reasonable and saying no went out the proverbial window.  His husband might questionable timing when it came to being so constantly horny, but he was too beautiful to refuse.  

Kurt held him that night, and again Blaine thought to push him away, already hot and sticky from the sex coupled with the summer heat.  He didn’t though.  It was rare enough that Kurt initiated sex, let alone initiated post-coitus cuddles.  Blaine would take this moment and store it away in his memory for nights when Kurt was insistent on hogging the blankets on the other side of the bed.  

They slept in the next morning, and Blaine grumbled as Kurt nudged him awake, trying to pull Kurt against him in his sleepy stupor before the words Kurt was trying to wake him with finally registered.

“Blaine… the sun didn’t rise.”

That’s what it looked like at first anyhow.  Further inspection and use of Jeff’s telescope and scientific mind though confirmed that the sun was still functional.  What was the problem was a thick cloud cover that had come in during the night and didn’t move, blocking out the sun and keeping everything dark.

Blaine just took Kurt’s hand and squeezed as he watched Kitty try not to cry as she held Isaac tightly to her and watched Santana fail in trying not to cry as she did the same with Eugene.

“Angel….”

“Yeah… I know… it’s time.”

Kurt’s voice was mournful as he said it, and Blaine followed him back to their home where Kurt pulled the bronze coin out from the drawer he had it stashed in, looking it over under the light from a lantern.

“That’s going to save the kids?”

Kurt nodded, not looking back to Blaine.  “In a manner of speaking…”

Blaine sat on the bed aside Kurt, setting a hand on Kurt’s back and looking down at the simple looking coin that was being turned over and over in Kurt’s hands.  “Please don’t tell me it means you have to sacrifice your own life Kurt… you’ve been acting so… off lately… I.. don’t think…”

“It won’t kill me Blaine.”

Blaine breathed out a sigh of relief.  The thought had only just come to him, but it was enough to make him tremble to consider.  He wasn’t sure he could choose between the love of his life and the kids.

Kurt stood, Blaine following his lead, and walked to the main room where he dropped the coin into a pot of water that had been sitting beside the firepit waiting to be used.  There was a small spark of light which caused Blaine to jump back a step in surprise, and then a beam that stretched out over the pot and illuminated the figure of a man.

“You’ve made your point.”  Kurt said plainly as Blaine squinted, letting his eyes adjust to light until he managed to recognize the figure in the light.

The white-eyed Other.

There was foreign babbling.  The kind Blaine had hoped he’d never have to hear again.  Quickly he stepped up beside Kurt, tense and ready to fight if the figure in the light decided to make a move against his lover.

“How can I know you’re telling the truth?”  Kurt said in response to the Other, who didn’t even respond to Blaine’s presence beside Kurt.

More babbling.  Blaine looked from the figure in the light to Kurt, who didn’t look back but reached down to squeeze his hand.

“No killing.  No harm.  They all need to be left alone and free to live out their lives.”

Blaine squeezed back, wishing he could at least understand what the white-eyed Other was saying so he could know what was going on.  

Their front door opened, revealing Kitty, Trent, Santana, Brittany, Jeff, and the rest of those that lived close to them, with Trent announcing them by way of saying “Hey!  We saw a bright light in here and wanted to make sure there wasn’t a fire and -” before snapping his jaws together and staring at the sight of the Other in the light.

“What the fuck!?” Santana growled, reaching for the short sword in her belt.  

Both Blaine and Kurt lifted a hand up to Santana, though Kurt never looked away from the Other he was conversing with.  

“He’s going to stop all of this.”  Blaine explained to the group flooding into his home, grateful for some purpose besides waiting beside Kurt to fix things.  “He’s telling them to stop.”

“Why didn’t he do that before then?!” Santana snarled, stalking towards the light ahead of everyone else who hung back by the door in a trance.

The white-eyed one uttered another string of nonsense and Kurt nodded to it, ignoring Santana and everyone else in the room as he looked to Blaine.  “I love you.”

Blaine blinked, drawn back to Kurt and letting those words that had always been felt but never said sink in.  “I… love you too angel…”

Kurt leaned in, pressing his lips to Blaine’s who took a shuddering breath as the truth of what was happening pounded into his skull, sending his heart beating against his ribs and his legs quavering.

“Wait… wait… Kurt… You’re not.  You said -”

Kurt nodded as he pulled back.  “I won’t die from this deal.  Neither will you or anyone else here.”

Blaine choked on his breath, reaching to wrap his arms around Kurt in one last hurried attempt to hold him, “But, but…”

“I love you.”

There was a blink.  A flash.  A shock of purple light that blinded Blaine for a moment and when he could see again, Kurt was no longer in his arms and there was no more light illuminating the house.  

He rushed around, stumbling over his own feet as he cried out Kurt’s name and looked in the bedroom and then raced outside, pushing past the shocked silent makeshift family he had created for himself.  Maybe Kurt would be outside.  Maybe this was just some horrible trick.

But outside there was nothing either.  In every direction he turned Blaine saw nothing, at least nothing that was Kurt.  Above, the clouds were parting and crackling with thunder, the sound mocking him and the state he had found himself in.

Kurt had given himself up for their wellbeing.

And he had left Blaine there without him.

His knees hit to the ground as his legs finally gave out, and Blaine looked up at the sky which broke above him, releasing the rain that had been kept from them for so long.  It soaked Blaine quickly, and he didn’t move, letting it wash over him until he was chilled to the bone with his clothing plastered against him.  He could hear people cheering from within the town, but he couldn’t celebrate with them.  

All the rain was good for was washing the tears off his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that's part II. For now I'm going to set the fic as complete, like I did with Part I, until Part III starts up. Please remember to review, as it keeps me motivated and helps get other people interested in reading the fic.


	33. HHW Media

I am so very excited to start posting the third and final part of H&HW once sabbypandawan/stormwitha6lettername is finished checking over the first chapter of it!  

To introduce this part, I'd first like to draw everyone's attention to the animated short crazzie-crissie made for it available here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMcOcRtMCqU>

You'll also see the poster art has changed for part III, courtesy of Rocketsurgery.  The original poster, along with the trading cards and other media I'm collecting can be found on my H&HW tumblr page at: <http://mmerainbows.tumblr.com/hhw>

Otherwise I'd like to thank everyone in advance for continuing to read along with what is my favourite of my own stories to share with you, and while not as popular as, say, Plug in Baby or Fire with Fire, I think it's the best of them too.  

Special thanks to twitchysquirrel, for giving me a decent review in her alterego as thehonestblurt, to Sabby for cheering me on endlessly, to Abraham for being a hottie, to everyone who points out my errors for keeping me on my toes, for everyone who reviews, because, honestly, I wouldn't do this if I didn't have the positive feedback, and to everyone that sends me those happy little messages, either on here, tumblr, or one of the other fanfic sites that totally make my day and keep me at it.  I don't know what I'll do once this fic is done yet, but I know I'll still be writing in some way, shape, or form because of your encouragement!

 


	34. Chapter 31: Aftermath

**_“Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water.” -Christopher Morley_ **

****  
If Blaine focused hard, he could still smell bits of Kurt in the pillow he held against him, and he used that small remainder of him to pretend that he was holding his beloved and not a pillow that was quickly absorbing his own scent of sweat and accumulated filth.  Everything was losing Kurt's smell, his touch, and Blaine feared that he was even forgetting Kurt's voice.  Part of that was his own fault though. **  
**

When Kurt had disappeared, he told himself that it was temporary.  He convinced himself that Kurt was merely gone for a meeting with the Others and would be back within hours.  So he had sent off their friends, verbalizing that Kurt would be back several times over and ignoring the way they glanced at one another with squinted eyes and kept their lips pursed tight, and cleaned up the cabin so it would be nice when Kurt got back.

In the morning, he told himself that meeting with a people who clearly had a vested interest in Kurt would probably take longer than the few hours he assumed, and extended the time period Kurt would be gone for.  First for a day, then two, and then a week.  He worked, as he normally did, kept a smile on his face, and ensured there were flowers out on the table in their home, freshly bloomed from the rains they had been gifted with, .  Kurt liked the scent of fresh flowers, saying once they reminded him of his mother and how his dad had always bought her fresh flowers whenever he could.

 One week turned into two, and Blaine had ignored the increase in his heartbeat.  He caught himself on multiple occasions telling himself aloud that Kurt would be back, and everything would resume being normal.  A couple of times, his friends, THEIR friends, overheard him and just rolled their lips in and clenched their teeth down on them to stop themselves from saying anything, giving Blaine that sad look his mother had given him once when his goldfish died and he had tried to argue that it was just sleeping.

Still, he kept the house tidied for Kurt, and even dedicated extra hours to work to earn enough credits to use at the trade center to purchase Kurt some soap when he returned.  It smelled like pears, and for Kurt, that would certainly be a treat.  Who knew if he would even get to bathe while with the Others.  Blaine wanted to be certain that the sacrifice Kurt had made would not go unrewarded, even if everyone else in town either seemed to not notice his absence, be alright with it, or not be talking about it.

It was when two weeks rolled into three that Blaine's rapid heartbeat and sense of anxiety could no longer be ignored.  His heart ached and his head throbbed.  He felt like his was in excruciating pain all over, with no reason for it. It made him short with everyone and everything.  First it was the goats.  He got mad at one for being an idiot and scratching a gash into its leg when it tried to get out of the pen.  He swore at it while he stitched it up.  Then he got angry with Mercedes who looked like a deer in headlights as he told her, in no uncertain terms, to tell her people to watch the animals better.

He was so easily irritated that when he saw the kids playing on all of Kurt's vehicle parts, as they had always done when Kurt had been working on them, he became enraged.  Blaine saw the kids, but he didn't see Kurt there with them.  Kurt should have been there.  He should have been tinkering with one of the motors he had collected by the house, or bent over the quad parked there, fixing the thingamajiggy or the whoozawhatzit or something that only Kurt knew about.  He yelled.  He yelled like he never had at the kids who gawked at him like he was mad and then ran away with tears in their eyes.  He should have felt bad; He did feel bad, but that guilt was submerged below anger.  Blaine checked to ensure that all of Kurt's motor parts were in place and untouched, though in all honesty he had no clue what they had been like before.  Kurt tended to his mechanical stuff, and Blaine had never thought to learn more about it.  He regretted it.

When Kitty came over to ask Blaine what was going on, why her son had come home crying because his uncle Blaine had yelled at him for no apparent reason, Blaine got mad at her too.  Why not, after all?  She had stood back and let Kurt be taken away.  It was her son, among other firstborns, that Kurt had thought of when he had sacrificed himself to the glow he summoned. If she, or any of the others in town for that matter, hadn't had any stupid kids, then Kurt wouldn't have worried about some stupid biblical threat the Others had placed on them.  Maybe if Kitty hadn't been so damned superstitious with her biblical nonsense, then they wouldn't have clued into the idiotic "plagues" and Kurt wouldn't have been any the wiser and left.  He spat it all at her, and she tried to toss it right back at him.  He was called a 'crazy person' and 'delusional' by her.  He got a plethora of finger wagging from her and then the final blow was that she told him to stay away from the kids before slamming the door as she left.  Blaine fumed.  She was wrong.  Of course she was wrong.  This was their entire fault.  Not just hers, or the kids, but the entire town.  They had made poor choices.  They had made too many risky runs for scavenging.  If Santana hadn't been caught and they hadn't gone after her, the Others wouldn't have known about Kurt.  It was everyone else's fault and no one was owning up to it.

Blaine stopped going to work then.  They didn't deserve his time and effort and skill.  Mercedes came to ask him to return, but he told her curtly that it was time to find someone else to do the veterinary work.  He wasn't going to help people that didn't appreciate what he and Kurt did.  Moreover, he didn't want to be around people who didn't acknowledge what Kurt had done for them all.  Kurt was gone, and they all acted like it was okay.  Like it didn’t matter.  How could they though?  In his mind, so insanely irrational at that point, it didn’t make sense.  He felt like his world had ended, so why hadn’t theirs?

He started talking to himself, trying to come up with things he could do to get Kurt back.  Then he spoke to the air, asking the god or gods of each religion he knew about to give him back his beloved.  Blaine promised to believe in anything if they complied.  He would be a better person, he would work harder, he would be kinder.  Anything.  Everything.  He just wanted Kurt back.

When the different gods didn’t answer his prayer-like pleadings, he tried talking to the Others.

The coin had disappeared, and with it, Blaine’s only known connection to the Others.  He had ideas though.  First he sat in the living room, right where he had last seen Kurt before he had been taken away, and spoke aloud.  Maybe, just maybe, they were listening and could hear him.  He promised they could do whatever they wanted to do to him if only they’d reunite him with Kurt.  Blaine would be their slave, if that was what they wanted of him.  He’d never escape, and always comply, just please, please, let him be with Kurt for a moment each day.

His second attempt to contact the Others came from making runs to the closest sources of water he knew about.  There, he would immerse himself in the water, even if that meant having to lay flat on the rocks of a barely bubbling creek bed, and hoped they would come across him there.  No one came by though, and so Blaine tried bigger bodies of water, reteaching himself how to swim from his days in swim classes as a child.  He would dive into the water, looking for portals or some other way to get himself to Kurt.  He’d yell along the edge of the water, telling the Others to take him, making a scene to try and get them to take notice.

There was no response from them though, and so, as a last attempt, Blaine ran to the woods, where years ago they had seen a shifting Other land and change from its bird form to a woman.  He yelled to the heavens, hoping one of them was nearby to hear him, and offering them the same deal he had in the cabin.  He screamed until his voice became hoarse and his lungs would no longer give him the air he needed to bellow, then he knelt on the ground and waited, hoping someone would come, hoping it would be Kurt or someone that would take him to Kurt.

A day later, after laying in the dirt of the forest so long that squirrels were creeping around him without fear, he finally got up and dragged his feet back to his cabin where he laid himself down on their bed and inhaled Kurt’s scent from the pillows.  That was where he stayed, only getting up to go relieve himself just outside the door of the cabin, even though Kurt would admonish him if he saw him doing so.  Blaine didn’t have the energy to go any further, and he didn’t care about how the place smelled outside their door.

People began to prepare for winter. What little crops they managed this year were being preserved or dried out, hides were being tanned and dried, Kitty's flowers and herbs were being set up inside a newly commissioned building dedicated to her botany expertise, and the birds were being plucked free of their feathers before being cooked up so that there was down enough for several new quilts.

The only reason Blaine knew all this was happening was because his friends told him.  They brought him meals, having to coax him into eating small bites – which he only did to stop them from pestering him.  Sam and Trent had been employed by the girls to hold Blaine down at one point and wash him since his smell had apparently become all consuming.  They thought it would be a fight, but Blaine let it happen.  In his mind, he pretended it was Kurt washing him, the way he did whenever Blaine got sick and couldn’t care for himself, and ignored how Sam whispered to Trent in a panic when Blaine reacted the way he always did to Kurt carefully washing him over.

Kitty was the one that kept him up to date on the community.  As things were prepared, Blaine wouldn't have thought that anything had changed from previous years.  People kept on going about their business, oblivious to the fact that Blaine had lost everything, and that they had lost what had protected them for so long.  A sacrifice made that hadn't been acknowledged by anyone around this place.  Only Blaine knew, only Blaine seemed to care 

Santana was less patient.  She told Blaine that he was “letting himself go in the worst way possible” and tried to physically drag him up and out of bed on several occasions.  He even suffered a slap of her hand when she had declared that she had had enough of his sulking.  Surprisingly, the slap did little to wake his senses, and Santana seemed to react more from her action than he did, looking at her offending palm and then Blaine’s red cheeked face before running out.

Blaine stayed in their bed.  He slept a lot, and when he wasn’t sleeping he was staring at nothing in particular.  Often he fantasized about Kurt being beside him, and reached up with his arm to hold the image of Kurt he had conjured up.  When he needed inspiration, he smelled Kurt’s side of the bed and closed his eyes, remembering memories of his man.  Kurt smiling at him, Kurt holding him, Kurt sleeping with his lips parted slightly, Kurt laughing with his eyes alight and his cheeks rosy.  How could he go on without that in his life?  How had he lived without it before?

Kitty told him that his runs to water sources had been good for the community.  It had shown them those places were safe from Others and now runs were being made to fill cisterns and barrels to replenish their water supply.  People were thanking him apparently.  It didn’t matter though.  They had gotten what they wanted, but he had nothing.

As the smell of Kurt faded from the bed, Blaine took pieces of Kurt’s clothing that had been left behind to hold to his nose while he laid down.  Each piece of clothing left the bins where Kurt had stored them like that, until it looked like Blaine was sleeping with a pile of laundry that now smelt more like him than Kurt, and he had to scream at Mercedes when she tried to take it away to wash it.  He didn’t want her to wash out any tiny bit of Kurt left in them that he might still be able to find.

Naturally, his friends thought he was descending into madness.  They would come alone, but more and more in pairs and groups to try different tactics on him.  Gentle soothing, direct demanding, trying to negotiate with him, and the worst – trying to get him to respond when they asked what Kurt would think of what he was doing.  Blaine hated that one.  If Kurt saw him to know what he was doing, after all, then Blaine wouldn’t be doing it in the first place. 

Wearing clothing stopped being a concern for Blaine, and instead of heating up the cabin with the fire pit when winter hit, he just piled all the blankets they had on top of him.  When he gathered those blankets, he saw what had become of the home he and Kurt had made.  It was dusty, devoid of life, and didn’t feel like home anymore.  Blaine didn’t want to be there, but he didn’t know where else to go.  Thus, he again stayed on the bed, which had developed a Blaine-sized imprint with the attention he had given it.

Mike was the only visitor he had that came alone by this point, and the only one who didn’t make any requests or plead with Blaine to get up.  He stayed mostly silent as he checked Blaine over; going through the same routine that Blaine knew he went through with Brittany when she had been depressed after Santana had gone missing.  That was what clued Blaine into what he had become.  Like Brittany, he had lost himself when his love had disappeared.  He didn’t know if Kurt was dead or alive, scared or happy, free or bound.  It was the trigger he needed to pull himself out of bed, though waiting until Mike had left, and slowly began cleaning up the cabin.  Not for anyone else’s benefit, and not for his own benefit, but because it was something he could do to keep his mind and body occupied and not completely focused on how Kurt wasn’t there.

Once the house was cleaned, he turned his attention onto himself.  He took the water rations that his friends had been leaving for him and used them to scrub himself over and over, until the cloth he used to wipe himself down dripped clear water instead of brown or yellow, and he didn’t feel like he was caked in a layer of his own fluids.  He dressed in clean clothing, and then went out to clean the area around their front entry that he had been using as a outhouse.  Since the first snow had fallen, it wasn’t as bad as it had been.  The flies had died off, and he could easily scoop the frozen remnants of his feces away and discard them into a hole in the forest. 

Being outside was what caught the attention of his friends.  Trent was the first to hobble over, still with that persistent limp of his, and ask Blaine if he needed any help.  Internally, Blaine smiled a little at Trent’s non-judgmental, non-aggressive means of showing Blaine he cared.  Externally, Blaine’s face couldn’t manage to form anything more than a scowl.  He was so out of practice and felt like smiling outwardly without Kurt would be an insult to Kurt’s memory.

Blaine accepted an invitation from Trent to come over for dinner that night.  Sitting quietly at the table while Trent and Kitty talked animatedly by him, a deliberate attempt to get him to join in the conversation.  He couldn’t move that fast though, and just making the effort of going out of the house and having dinner with others was exhausting.  Added to that was Trent’s children playing, periodically asking if ‘Uncle Blaine’ was all right.  They had been sheltered from Blaine’s decline, along with all the other children of his friends, so he knew he must look a fright to them with his ridiculous beard growth, unruly hair, and eyes that never focused on anything for too long.  Watching the children play made him sadder, made him wish Kurt was there with him even more, because now he knew how truly alone he was.  He didn’t have Eugene like Brittany had when Santana disappeared.  Blaine had no one.  Nothing.

That night, Blaine bawled into his pillow.  He had cried before that, but nothing so body racking as what he did then.  Kurt was gone.  He had left and he wasn’t coming back.  Blaine didn’t just cry out of missing Kurt, but cried because of the finality of his departure.  Unless Blaine did something, unless he figured out how to get to Kurt, then he might never see him again.

So he began plotting.  He didn’t talk to anyone about it.  That would be crazy after all.  He knew his friends well enough to know that they’d try to talk him out of it, guard him to prevent him from actively seeking the Others, and otherwise make things more difficult.  Blaine would find Kurt.  He would find him or die in the process.  

He started by sleeping on the couch in the living room.  The bed stunk, and carried far too many memories that made him cry all the harder.  It was in the living room that he nurtured his small idea into a plan.  Blaine knew the roads, though he hadn’t been on them for years, and knew how to read a map well enough to take him to places where he had seen Others from a great distance before.  If he could find such a place, he’d have a small shard of hope of seeing Kurt again.  It was only through them that he’d be able to find Kurt. 

He stole Trent's maps from his days as a Warbler, since Blaine's had been burnt years ago in the fires caused by Sebastian, and also Trent's own chain of Halfling ears.  Blaine didn’t know if he’d need the latter, but he felt like it was better that the ear chain was taken away anyhow.  The Others had spared their small community, but if they discovered that trophy of their ears amidst the people of the community, who knows what they’d do.  Blaine didn’t know how they’d discover the ear chain, but he did not doubt the abilities of the Others to find such a prize, especially since it had been so easy for Blaine to sneak into Trent’s home when he and his family were all out and find the box with Trent’s old Warbler items just sitting atop a shelf, ready to be pillaged.

Before Kurt had been zapped away, he had restored Blaine’s ATV, the Canary.  It sat near their cabin, now with a layer of fine white snow on it.  Blaine revved it up one afternoon just to see if it would run.  It puttered for a bit, but finally caught and the motor rumbled loudly enough for some of the kids to rush over in their little winter parka’s and look in awe.  Naturally, it also attracted the attention of the adults and Blaine had to spin a little lie about wanting to move the Canary to a covered spot in the forest in order for it to survive the winter weather better.  That seemed to sate their worries, and Blaine did move the Canary - far enough that the next time he started the engine, no one would be able to hear it but him.

Fuel was another issue.  Kurt had also been working on distilling his own fuel from more readily available sources.   Kitty had helped with her knowledge of botany, and together they had mason jars full of the pale yellow substance they had concocted lined up in her greenhouse.  Again Blaine stole, this time replacing the jars with ones fill with his own piss which looked enough like the homemade fuel that he hoped Kitty wouldn’t look twice at it.  Those jars were piled into the cargo bin of the Canary, taking up most of the space.  He’d need it though, in order to get him as far as he could towards the west coast where he intended to travel.  Blaine wasn’t sure it would be enough, or that it would even work, but it was his best shot.

While he was plotting his escape, he accepted dinners from his friends, who seemed to alternate days they would take him in - like a child without parents.  He didn’t speak much at the dinners, so withdrawn into himself and mentally inventorying what he’d need to bring and where he’d get it from.  Babies and children were placed on his lap periodically, an attempt to draw out his more social side that had seemed to go into hibernation, and Blaine snuggled and lazily rocked them as they were placed, knowing well that it might be the last time he’d ever see them once he left.

In order to get some of the supplies he needed for the trip, he had to make some trades.  This meant going back into town, a place he had avoided since he had become one with his bed.  Some people looked at him curiously when he reentered the village, others greeted him openly.  No one said a peep about Kurt, and, certainly, Blaine was sure some of them were relieved that Kurt was gone.  They didn’t, couldn’t, possibly understand the sacrifice Kurt made to ensure their children were alive and well.  They only cared for themselves.  So Blaine ignored them, making his trades - things from the home he’d no longer need, for supplies he’d need for the trip, and telling the clerk that he was making accomodations in his supplies for living on his own.  He was getting good at turning tales to avoid suspicion.

People, his friends even, assumed he was getting better, and while outwardly that was true, inwardly he was still focused on Kurt.  He played it up though as much as he felt capable, even going back to work for short shifts.  Blaine was planning though, always in his mind.  Calculating distances, trying to determine which routes to take, and trying to figure out the odds that different human settlements would still exist on his way to the coast.  He would need to bring things to trade.  Small though, since his carrying capacity was limited.  Medicine was his best bet, and just like he had taken so much already, he snuck small amounts of medicine out of the clinic and hid it in the Canary’s cargo bin.

He was dragged along to a dance by his friends, though hung out at a table watching them all have fun.  They each took a turn sitting with him, babysitting really, until Santana pulled over David Karofsky and made him sit beside Blaine in what had to be the most awkward moment of his existence.  

“So… how you doing?”  David uttered after a silent minute.

“Surviving.”

“Yeah… I get that.”

David was quiet for another full minute before he turned his body towards Blaine and spread his arms out and open. “Look.  Maybe I’m overstepping here, but I was thinking that maybe you and I… well, that we could go out sometime.”

It took Blaine completely by surprise.  So much so he choked on the home distilled alcohol he had been sipping and had to bend over to cough until he could properly breath again.  He had to hold a hand out to stop David from coming to his aid while he was keeled over, mind reeling from the suggestion that he move on with a guy that Kurt had noted to him before, in no uncertain terms, had made his life hell at one point.

“I’m… David.  I’m taken.  You know that.”  Blaine finally sputtered out when he sat back upright.

“But… Kurt…. he’s been gone for months now Blaine.  I thought that you were here because you’re ready to move on….”  

There was sincerity in David’s voice, and Blaine glanced to the dancefloor where he caught Kitty sneaking a peek at them both.  This had been her doing.  She was the one who had been most intent on having Blaine come to the dance, and she was David’s self-declared adopted sister.  She had a vested interest in them both being happy, and thought that this, having them together, was the best way to go about that.

She was insane.

“I’m not.  Sorry David.”

David was good about the rejection, changing the subject immediately and talking about the runs he had been making.  He mostly spoke for the need to fill the void between them though because now Blaine’s mind was going a mile a minute and he knew he needed to leave soon in order to evade further attempts to have him hook up with others - though David was the only openly gay guy in the community who was also single.  His friends thought the void in his life could be filled with someone new, but there was no one else for himself but Kurt.  Kurt was his soulmate and no one was going to be able to convince him otherwise.

He left the next morning, leaving behind a note in the cabin that explained that he could no longer be there without Kurt and wishing them all well.  He didn’t say what he intended to do because he knew it would be pointless.  They couldn't understand.

The Canary was filled right up, as was the knapsack he wore on his back as he drove.  He didn’t leave any room, ensuring he had fuel, rations, a change of clothing, tools, the medicine and his most important item - a phone with Kurt’s favorite playlist on it.  He wanted to ensure he had something to give Kurt when… if… he ever saw him again.  

He didn’t go straight west though.  Instead he took the road northwest to where the Others had captured them earlier on in the year.  Blaine enjoyed the quiet of the road, with nothing but the engine to listen to.  No one else was there to tell him to get up, to move on, and to continue without Kurt.  The journey was quick compared to the days and days of walking they had endured to get back home from the lake originally, and Blaine was there in a period of two days, stopping only to sleep in abandoned shacks and farmhouses along the way.  It made his rear hurt to drive for that long on roads that had become cracked and full of holes, but he didn’t see the point in prolonging his venture.  The sooner he found Others, the sooner he might find out what happened to Kurt.  

The lake looked different when it was frozen over.  Less treacherous, less angry.  Blaine parked his quad right up to the little restaurant that sat beside the lake, taking his bag into the building and then having to step out immediately when he saw what was waiting for him inside.  

He hadn’t forgotten that people died inside that stupid underwater box they had been trapped in when they had been captured, but he didn’t think he would find their bodies inside the restaurant either.  Their bodies, half-decayed and pulled apart by wild animals that had gotten into the building, still stunk of rotted flesh despite the cold in the air.  Blaine knew it was them by their clothing though, the only part of them not in bits, and it brought up the memory of seeing them die.  Die because the light they emitted wasn’t as strong as his own.  The light that showed that he was closest to Kurt of them all.  

Once he was sure he could contain his gag reflex, Blaine went back into the restaurant.  Carefully he gathered their remains, taking them outside on a pyre he made by the lake.  It wasn’t the burial they deserved, and even though he felt he should say something, Blaine found he couldn’t summon the words out of him.  There was nothing he could say to bring them back, to give their loved ones any peace.  All he could do was ensure that what little was left of them wasn’t consumed by the local wildlife.  Taking Azimio to the fire was especially hard, especially since he was in pieces.  Blaine recalled one night a couple years ago when Azimio had gotten so drunk at a party that he had needed support getting home - Blaine under one arm, and Sam under the other.  He was so heavy that breaks were needed every couple of blocks.  Now though, his individual pieces were so light that Blaine questioned whether or not it was really him.

Blaine opted not to sleep in the restaurant, which still stunk of death, and instead curled up beside the remnants of the pyre.  He hoped that it might attract the attention of some Others.  Maybe they would come, find him there, and take him away.  He might be able to communicate with one of them, tell them that he would do anything to be with Kurt.  Maybe he would get lucky.

He wasn’t though.  When he awoke the next morning, frost covering his beard, there was no one around him.  He walked out the frozen lake, yelling for them to come and get him, searching for some kind of portal or magic that would allow him to transport himself to them the same way Kurt was whisked away.  Nothing though.  It was like the Others no longer cared for the water they had once kept humanity from.   That, or their patrols had stopped being as diligent as they had been when Blaine and the Warblers had been travelling.  He thought about staying there for a few days, to see if any Others would come by, but something within him told him to continue on, and so he did.

What was once Alberta was largely flat and full of overgrown grasses and crops.  Cows lived wild, sleeping in small herds on the side of the overgrown roads, and deer were everywhere.  Blaine had yet to come across any other humans, and it was no different as he drove down an old highway southwest towards the Rocky Mountains over the course of the next couple of days, where the horizontal grade of the land slowly developed into small hills and valleys, and then into large foothills.  He had been through this place before, though never in the winter, and felt a keen bit of nostalgia as he rode over the same roads he had once gone through with the Warblers.  

He was using up the fuel he had so carefully packed away, and wished he had paid more attention to Kurt when Kurt had told him about the fuel making process.  Blaine was always terrible for listening to Kurt when he was talking mechanics, always paying too much attention to those sweet pink lips and the way Kurt's body moved so gracefully when he was talking about something passionately.  Kurt usually didn’t get too animated when he spoke, but something about cars and vehicles made him light up like a child, and in those moments, Blaine could see what Kurt must have looked like as a small boy.

The space left behind from the mason jars he discarded after filling the gas tank though allowed Blaine to grab things from the places he stayed at on the way though.  Some needles and thread from one place, a box of laundry detergent at another, and a box of popcorn from yet another.  If he met up with other humans, these were things he might be able to trade with, and now that he knew how often he needed to fill his gas tank up, he knew he wouldn’t get to the coast unless he found another source of fuel along the way.

Because it was winter, Blaine had only so many hours of daylight to drive in each day, and he spent the entirety of it on the quad, breaking only to pee and fuel up - often at the same time.  When it got dark, he would find a place to camp for the night and eat then.  One of the benefits of being bed bound for so long was that his stomach seemed to have shrunk and he didn’t need to eat as much to be full any longer.  Definitely an advantage when he only had so much space for food.

Going into the mountain though changed that routine.  The roads twisted this way and that, covered in fallen rocks and trees that required him to park his quad and move out of the way in order to continue on the same path.  There weren’t as many places to stop along the way either, and there were more animals running around freely than there had been in the prairies.  More than once he spotted a bear that would eye him up hungrily and start moving towards him as he drove past, and he was grateful on each occasion to have a vehicle that could outpace and outlast those bears.  

Blaine had always loved the grandeur of the mountain range.  Clouds covered the great stony beings, their peaks poking out of the white puffs and making them look like they were floating in the air.  Trees grew to massive heights, shadowing the moss coated roads.  Everywhere he drove, Blaine could hear birds singing.  The Warblers used to camp in these mountains, driving as far up as their quads would allow into small flat spaces that only hikers might find.  In that time, they had stayed away from the rivers that crossed through the mountains, as Others patrolled their sides, but now Blaine had to wonder if they were as unattended as the lake back north.

The Canary had held up well so far during the trip, barely making a rumble of complaint, but the instant Blaine started beckoning it to ascend the angled roads that led into the mountains, over the vegetation that had grown over what had been concrete and tar, it started grunting and wheezing in a way that made Blaine worry.  He didn't know how to fix his machine.  The method of dealing with a dying ATV back in his Warbler days was finding a new one to replace it, and he wasn't sure where'd he even look in the mountains to find a new quad to take him to the ocean.

However, The Canary did manage to make it up the worst of the roads and out into what had been an abandoned town.  Blaine wasn’t expecting to see anyone or anything as he ventured into the streets between the buildings, but there were lights in the windows of the homes, and people walking along the street, all pausing to look at Blaine with furrowed brows and curious gazes.  The town had been abandoned, Blaine thought, because of its proximity to a lake nested in the mountains, so to see it housing people again was surprising to say the least.

"Halt stranger" a man called out to Blaine from the side of the road, holding his palm up and out towards Blaine who complied, bringing The Canary to a stop and putting it into park as he waited for the man to approach him.  He was dark skinned and had contrasting salt and pepper hair that suggested his age was more than his strong looking body would have suggested.  A hand was set on Blaine's handlebar, wrinkled and weathered, but just as tough looking as the rest of the man, and shadow filled eyes looked over Blaine for a moment before speaking.

"Where you from stranger?"

Blaine gave the man a nod, bringing his hands off his handlebars and to his sides, feeling that there was no reason to be ill-at-ease, nor give anyone a reason to distrust him.  "A community about five days ride from here straight at a bearing of a sixty degrees."

People were starting to surround the man and Blaine, leaving little room for escape if Blaine needed to make it.  Still he forced himself to be compliant, hoping they'd see he wasn't a threat and let him continue on, or, better still, give him a place for the night and tell them what they knew.  Maybe they had fuel they could trade, or, better yet, information about the Others.

"That's a long ride... what brings you here?"

"I'm travelling to the ocean."

"Halfling camps are all around the ocean... you suicidal or just stupid?"

“Neither.”  Blaine said plainly, taking the information about the camps into his mental inventory.  Clearly these people knew something if they knew the situation around the ocean and they knew of Halflings. 

"We don't get many strangers through here."

It was a statement, but one that Blaine identified as one he needed to respond to because the man was trying to convey how odd it was that Blaine was coming through.

"I used to come through this road all the time when I was with a nomadic group years ago.  How are you all able to live here with a lake so close?  There used to be patrols out here all the time."

Now it was the man's turn to assess the situation, eyes narrowing slightly as he considered Blaine's words before responding.

"Most of us were living up high in the mountains, avoiding the patrols to come down and get water or hunt.  Patrols got less and less though over time, and now we haven't seen them in years.  They're not interested in this place anymore.  We moved back into the town three years ago.  It's been safe since then.  Not a single patrol since."

Blaine nodded, looking at the group gathered, counting in his mind those that had come out to observe the proceedings.  At least fifty, and probably a lot more if the noses he saw behind curtained windows was any indication.  It wasn't as big as where he had come from, but still big compared to any group he had met on the road before Kurt's community.  Things had definitely changed if humans were gathering again in such large numbers.  Had the rebels made headway?  Were Others in retreat?  

“If you have a place, I was hoping to camp out here tonight.  Maybe make some trades if you have anything to offer.  I won’t be any trouble and I’ll leave come first light tomorrow.”

The man pursed his chapped lips, thinking for a moment before nodding his head over his shoulder.  “Ain’t my call to make.  Have to wait for our headsman.”

Blaine again nodded, acknowledging their system of government and waiting as the crowd pulled back to allow an elderly woman, white hair pulled back in a messy bun, to approach Blaine and the Canary.  She used a cane to shuffle forward, minding the ice on the ground and shooing away hands from those younger than her offering assistance.  She was hunched over, but Blaine imagined she must have been tall in her youth because even with her back forming a question mark, she stood as tall as he was once he got off the Canary to greet her.

“Hi there.  I was just asking if I could-”

“I could hear you boy.”  The woman snarled his way as her dark eyes looked him up and down, sizing him up.  “Old, not deaf.”

There wasn’t much that Blaine could say in way of a response to that, so he let her eyes wander over him until she gave him a stiff nod and looked towards the old black man beside them.  “He’ll stay in my guest room.  Have him park his contraption by it and show him where to get some food.”

It wasn’t what Blaine was expecting, to share a place with the person in charge, and someone who seemed like she might toss him out on a dime given her demeanor, but it was good news and Blaine stuttered out a thanks before the dark man, who introduced himself as Kofi, directed him to park a couple blocks over at a nice little building that might have once been a bed and breakfast.

Blaine was led to a mess hall, taking the offered food and again thanking everyone he came across profusely.  As he ate, he found himself bombarded with questions from different people, old and young, about where he had come from and why he was travelling to the ocean.  He answered as best as he could, though avoided telling them about his mission to find Kurt among the Others.  That would bring up even more questions, and ones he wasn’t comfortable answering.  Instead he told them his community had tasked him with discovering more about how things had changed, fibbing as he said that the patrols in his area had become less too and they wanted to know if the tides had turned and humanity was safe.  This led to the people there telling him that they hadn’t seen Others in years, and that the people who came to their town and joined their numbers had said much the same.  It was only along the ocean that the Others still had a presence it seemed.  

It meant that Blaine knew he didn’t have to stop at every lake and river to look for Others.  Now he was certain of the direction he needed to take in order to find his beloved.  Once dawn came, he would go straight west (or as straight as the mountain range would allow him to go) and find out what had happened to Kurt, come hell or high water.

 


	35. 32: Vacillate

_**“Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self.” - B. R. Ambedkar** _

 

It took everything in Kurt not to lash out at the white-eyed one, the Ilu, when he was escorted to his new residence after beaming away from his cabin home. That ‘thing’, that Other, was one of the three that was responsible for killing people he had lived alongside for years, and while they weren’t his best of friends, they were people that didn’t deserve to die. Worse yet, at least in his mind, they had hurt him and Blaine. They had threatened the people he cared about, the kids he had taken care of over the years. Not just by threatening the lives of the firstborn children with their idiotic reinvention of biblical plagues, but by killing off the livestock they relied on and the destruction of what little crops they had with those locusts - the sound of which still echoed in his ears after all these months.

Yet the white-eyed one, who gave her name as Vila, led Kurt through what looked like how he imagined a drug induced hallucination might be, full of swirling black and white streams that danced around them as they walked. It was some kind of portal, and while it made him pause in awe initially upon being pulled into it, he was quick to tense back up again. He was being taken away from everyone he had ever cared for after all. He was sacrificing his happiness for their continued existence. As far as he was concerned, he was being taken away against his will.

“It’s good you finally came to your senses. You belong with us. Not them.”

Kurt had remained silent, keeping his fists held tightly to his sides as he followed her through the invisible path, cutting through lights and blurs of color before they reached a hollowed out point in the vortex which Vila walked through. Kurt again hesitated, but followed after. He had to keep up his end of the bargain. The community would be left alone, but he had to come along willingly.  That was the deal. That was the sacrifice.

Stepping through the white window, Kurt took in another breath. Where he had been whisked away to was like every children’s storybook he had ever read to Beth or any of the other children. Grand grey towers, accented by flags of different colors stood proudly out in the distance. There was a forest, greener than he knew green could be in the distance on his left. Opposite it was a field that was a rainbow of colors. He could see figures in it, small from his perspective, dancing in them without worry about being attacked or threatened. He was on a roof of some kind of castle, as high as any building he had come across in his travels or on scavenging trips. It was part of what looked like a city, not modern, but instead classically built. If he knew the words for how it built, he might describe it as something between Roman and Gothic, but architecture aside, what stood out to him was how clean and bright everything was.  

This wasn’t a place touched by the war the Others had laid upon humanity. This was their home.

People, no, Others bustled through the roads below him, talking and laughing and acting as if everything was alright with the world. It was though, since this was their world after all. They hadn’t been decimated by humanity. It had been the other way around.  

None of them had been forced to leave the one they loved. None of them had lost family after being forced from their homes. None of them had to survive on the bare minimum just to see another day.

Kurt kept following Vila. They went inside the building, just as brightly decorated on the inside as the outside would suggest. If anyone from the community saw the luxury that Others existed in, they would seethe. Luxury in the community was having a bit of cake or, as a memory reminded him, finding a box of tampons.  

Kurt was brought to an open room with a single bed, draped in an almost transparent cloth that glinted with gold sitting in one corner. The room was sparsely decorated, but as big as several of the buildings in the community put together.

“This will be your room.”

Kurt didn’t… couldn’t respond. He kept looking. There was a large washbasin in the corner opposite the bed, and a huge window between them both that overlooked the street below. It looked like the basin had real working taps, and was stocked with different glass bottles at the side he was betting were what community members longed for in idle discussion - soaps and conditioners. There was a huge red rug in the center of the floor which no piece of furniture sat atop. It looked out of place there, with no obvious function to it, and Kurt had to remind himself that before the Others invaded, that humans decorated just for the sake of aesthetics once too. Not everything needed a use in those times.

The only other pieces of furniture were a large wooden wardrobe, opened to reveal a few, much too fancy pieces of clothing he guessed he would be expected to wear, and a table with a chair.  

This would never be home.

“We’d ask that you stay here for now. I will be telling the council of your agreement and arrival. You should have a guest in soon.”

Vila didn’t stay for a response. She was either keen on the fact that Kurt wasn’t going to speak to her or uninterested in any reply he had to make. For awhile he hovered in place, unsure if he should step in further into the room dubbed his own, or hold fierce to the ground he already knew would hold him. Eventually though, out of boredom and a cramp that travelled up his leg, he walked to the window and looked down to the streets below. He should have been amazed by the sights. Others of all types, some that had feathers in place of hair, some that had hair everywhere, more white eyed ones like Vila, and even something that didn’t even look remotely human with its scales and claws all milled about below. If fairy tales were real, this was where they came from.

“Kurt…”

It had been years since he had heard that voice, and then it was only in his mind. This was the first time he had heard that voice, the same the lullabied him to sleep each night as a child, in almost two decades now.

He spun on his heels quickly, letting his eyes widen and give away the shock and surprise as he looked at the woman walking towards him with open arms, familiar yet different from his memories.

“Mom?”

Elizabeth took him into her arms without answering the question, folding him in against her body and keeping him there until he allowed himself to just be held without fear that she’d vanish the same way she had from his mind when the truth of his nature became apparent the night he’d come back from the dead.

“My boy… my boy… I’d always hoped, no, wished I’d see you again… but I never knew for sure…”

 

* * *

 

Months passed, and Kurt’s mother served as his guide in this new world, but despite her work with him, it still wasn’t the home he wanted. Each day began the same. She would be there when he awoke, sitting on a bench by the window she had brought in for him, and then leave to get him breakfast after arguing with him that he should wash and shave. The shock and amazement of having his mother back in his life had worn off, and even though he was damned near thirty, he found himself being treated like a child. Beauty was expected here, and personal hygiene standards were high. A week after coming, she had tried to convince Kurt to go to one of the communal springs. They had already walked by several communal springs, where people bathed naked and exposed to all. Elizabeth argued that it was what was ‘normal’ there, and that the springs were infused with protective magical properties that warded off sickness and depression.

Kurt had just solemnly insisted that the last thing he wanted to do was bathe as an adult with his mother.

It wasn’t the first point of contention between them. However easy it had been for his mother to integrate herself into Other culture, it wasn’t going to be as easy for Kurt, if only because he had stubbornly promised to himself that he wouldn’t forget what he had given up to be here for.

Two weeks in, after Kurt had finally agreed to wear the silken, colored clothing that was waiting for him in the wardrobe with his own clothing falling apart, Elizabeth had brought him to meet the council, a ruling group of Others with a representative from each of the respective subgroups. Representing the changelings, or Berserks as they called themselves, was a furry man that reminded Kurt of the canine shapeshifter that had been part of that group that had tortured him and killed the people he had known. Another white-eyed one, Ilu as he came to know them as, represented those that worked specifically in death magic. There was a scaly creature that did more hissing than talking, green and winged, like a small dragon from Beth’s favorite storybooks. Then there was several different members who didn’t have any physical features that set them apart from one another. Elizabeth explained to him that the magic they used was what set them apart. There was a red haired woman, who wore a permanent scowl, representing the Others that used elemental magic. A man with a shock of black hair represented Others who had supporting magic like healing and protection. Then there was the current leader of the group, voted in by the public, who also represented vision magic, something that Kurt was still working to try and understand.  

Kurt listened into their discussion, sitting beside Elizabeth at the side of the room and wondering why the hell he had been brought to listen to politics that dealt largely with what to do with human groups that were attacking coastal settlements. It was a long, drawn out talk, one that he had a hard time not falling asleep to with all the subtle niceties and diplomatic means of speaking with one another the group went through. In short, it was boring, and that said a lot since Kurt had been bored most of the time since he had come to this place.

When the group was adjourned, they also spent an inordinate amount of time shaking hands and wishing one another well before Elizabeth finally tapped Kurt on the knee to rouse him from his state of entrancement on the floor. Begrudgingly he stood up alongside her as the black haired Other, the one representing support magic, walked up to them.

“This him?”

She nodded, smiling broadly, and Kurt immediately knew he was missing something. He glanced between them, his mother, in her form as a Halfling with her chestnut hair that he had inherited, still taller than him by a bit, and the man who was taller still, whose eyes were gray and blue all at once, seeming to swim together as they looked at Kurt thoughtfully.

That’s when Kurt clued in. Those eyes. The same ones he had. The same as his mother’s… and didn’t someone say that she was the daughter of someone notable?  

“First grandchild I’ve ever gotten from a Halfling child of mine.” Finavar chuckled, looking from Elizabeth to Kurt, who felt bile rising in his throat.

“First child from a Halfling in countless centuries if the scribes are right,” Elizabeth confirmed with a nod, looking at Kurt and then nodding Finavar’s way. “Your grandfather.”

“My… grandfather died in the floods the Others brought in The Tides,” Kurt stammered, fists balling at his sides, thinking back to the man that had bounced him on his knee as a little boy and been there along with his grandmother after Elizabeth had been buried, or what they thought was her body, to help Burt and Kurt for a couple months afterwards until they transitioned into life without her. Burt’s father. That was the only grandfather he knew. The only one he cared about.

“He is also your grandfather,” Elizabeth asserted plainly, her Otherness coming out in the stoic way she said it.

“Family isn’t just blood,”  Kurt spat, purposely keeping his eyes off the man in question. “My family died because of what they decided to do.”

“I didn’t agree with that choice Kurt,” Finavar spoke softly, though not softly enough to evoke any sympathy out of Kurt.

“But I’ll bet you didn’t stop it either. I bet you shook their hands when the decision was made, just like you did today,” Kurt snarled, his fingers digging into his palms so dangerously close to cutting into him with his nails.

“You’re right. I didn’t. We’re a harmonious people Kurt. We work together and support one another. Something humans could clearly learn from given their history.”

“If only you hadn’t all taken away the opportunity for them to learn,” Kurt hissed, finally submitting to the anger in him and turning his glare onto the much taller man, no, creature. What he wouldn’t have given to have a bow to use then.

Others, Kurt discovered, didn’t generally roll their eyes when annoyed or mocked, and Finavar was a pure-blooded Other through and through, instead nodding to both Elizabeth and Kurt in turn.  “Well then. Perhaps future conversations will bear more fruit.”

He left then. Leaving Kurt even more angry with his apparent apathy. There was no way he was related to that… thing.

“Finavar has countless Halfling children Kurt. I’m merely one of many.  Quarterling’s though….”

“I know. I’m fucking rare. I got that. Fuck load of good it does.”

If there was one thing that this form of Elizabeth had in common with the memory of the human form Kurt remembered, it was that she was nothing if not patient. Instead of getting irritated with him, or telling him to watch his language, she instead placed a gentle hand to his shoulder. “It’s a great honor for him to have been the source of your existence.”

“Well good for him.”

“He has the same ability you do, although his is much stronger. He’s responsible for the barrier that keeps us all safe from the human world.”

That was when Kurt learned that they were underwater, though it took a lot longer than the explanation required for him to accept it. The sun he saw, for example, was generated using magic. The forest too. Despite the fact that it looked like this kingdom went on forever, it had a limit. This was where the pure-blooded Others went to centuries ago. They left the land above, leaving behind only myths in their absence, and created a new world for themselves below the depths of the darkest waters. A land which Finavar was key in creating. He had been responsible for creating those barriers, making them permanent, and keeping humans and Others separate for thousands of years.

“Why did they return then?”

“Humanity became too advanced… submarines were able to go to greater depths, and there were machines threatening to expose this place.  Halflings had been going up to the surface meanwhile, living lives up there and returning with terrible stories of how humans had been warring with one another… I was one of the last Halflings to leave….” Elizabeth explained slowly.

“Why did you leave us?  Do you know what it did to me?  To dad?”

Elizabeth sighed, and, in her way, avoided the question. “I was called back, and I didn’t actually think I would be reunited with you so I didn’t just leave, I shed my human skin so you would think I was dead. I thought I was providing you both with closure you wouldn’t have had if I had just left without explanation.”

“Why didn’t you say no?  Why didn’t you ignore the call?”

“It’s not a call that can be ignored Kurt. It’s more than something verbal. There is a pull of your physical self. One way or another, I was going to be taken away. I just decided to do it on my terms instead of theirs.”

It was one of many conversations they had that had ended in no closure, and Kurt had just accepted and revelled in the silence that followed. He missed silence. This place was all too noisy and busy, so different from what he was used to, and Others actually talked to him here. They approached him, would ask him if he was ‘The Quarterling’ and then ask him to tell them stories of the land above. He would excuse himself though, uncomfortable with what might seem to them to be simple social interaction.

They accepted him in this land, without question, without complaint. It didn’t matter that he was shorter than most, if not all of them, or that his ears were far more rounded than anyone else, or that his hold on whatever magic he had was weak at best - they accepted him.

It didn’t sit right with him. In fact, it made his stomach turn.

Elizabeth didn’t take Kurt to the council meeting chambers again, though she would bring messages from them, the likes of which made Kurt sick.

“They’d like to know about your viability.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“They’d like to pair you with a virile female.”

The first time Elizabeth had brought that particular message, Kurt had merely looked at her with knotted eyebrows and pinched eyes like she must be speaking crazy, but then she came again and again with the same message, delivered in an increasingly urgent tone, and Kurt had to squash it.

“I don’t like women in that way mother.”

“Oh I know. That doesn’t matter.”

Just like that, his coming out to his mother was shut down in favor of producing an heir, or rather, to see if it was possible to produce an heir. Create a… what would it be… five eighths if it were with a pure blood or three eighths if with a halfling or a one eighth with a human… She had never indicated what they wanted him to be paired up with. It became clear, as time passed and the topic was continually brought up, that it was one of the major reasons, if not the only reason, why they were interested in claiming him as one of their own.

“Sexuality isn’t the issue here that it has been in the human world Kurt. It’s completely separate from sex actually. You know my father, your grandfather, prefers men as well, yet he has over a hundred children from different women - both pureblood and human. The goal is to create new magic, just as humans like to create new technology, by making new mixtures.”

“So I’m just a fucking experiment,”  Kurt huffed, glaring out the window at the happy creatures below, Elizabeth watching him coolly from what was undeniably her bench.

“To an extent. Everyone contributes what they can though in this culture. There will come a point they will ask you themselves to contribute your uniqueness through siring children. It won’t come through me anymore.”

“Is that supposed to be a threat? Let them come and tell me themselves. I don’t fucking care. I don’t see it the same way you all do….” The fury spiralling in Kurt’s mind spun open a memory, revealing a scene from his youth. His mom and dad, dancing in the kitchen, or… well… his dad trying to dance and his mom laughing as he looked on. How was the woman in this room with him the same person?

“Did you even love dad or was that another experiment?”

It was the first time since they had been reunited that Elizabeth remained quiet after being questioned by him, and looking at her, Kurt realized he had finally touched a nerve. Her cool and calm Halfling exterior was penetrated by human memories.

“I loved him.  I still do.”

“He’s dead.”

“Doesn’t mean that I don’t have love for him still.”

Most of his days in the first month were spent in his mother’s company, being shown different parts of the main town. Kurt learned that all the different subgroups of Others had their own lands within the protective barrier. Berserkers lived in the forest he had seen in the distance on his first day, the Ilu lived just beyond that in a place Elizabeth described as perpetually dark which accounted for their blanched skin, the Dragon-like creatures, whose name he couldn’t pronounce without spitting everywhere, lived past the field to the east. There were also smaller villages, housing subgroups based on their magical specialties. The capitol housed everyone though. It was where Others went for trade, for brokering deals, or for meetings. It belonged to them all, and was also where most of the Halflings lived.

Halflings had their own special place in this society. Purebloods had long mated with humans to produce new magic, or more powerful versions of their own magic. The human part of Halflings was only apparent in their strength, and Kurt discovered it was mostly Halflings that had led The Tides - so much less delicate than their pure blood counterparts. They could also hide in human society, and many of them had in their youth, being raised by a human parent until they were reclaimed by the Others when their magical powers developed.  

That was the hardest thing for Kurt to swallow. So many Halflings that had grown up in human society, with human family, and with human values. How quickly they had turned against half of their blood because of the ruling of a council of pure bloods. There was no Halfling representative on the council, if only because Halfling magic varied as much as any other Other magic.  

If the Halflings were upset about their lack of representation, or that they had been given marching orders to destroy those that comprised part of their genetic material, they didn’t show it though. The ones he met, his mother included, seemed happy in their little utopian world where the sun always shone and rain didn’t exist, much as it hadn’t back in the community, but because it was being withheld from them.

As time bore on, his mother left him the company of other Others. He was introduced to a craftsman, who made him a new bow complete with a quiver full of arrows better than he could have ever hoped to make on his own, and then would spend hours in the field outside the capitol shooting them into a fighting dummy made by a Halfling doll maker. The arrows seemed impervious to damage, and the only time he would stop would be to pull the arrows from the dummy so he could shoot them off again.

He had to have another dummy made a week later, when there was more stuffing than fabric holding it in left to it.

It was in those moments in the field that he thought of Blaine. It wasn’t that he didn’t think of him any other time. In the mornings, in the space between fully awake and still asleep, he would sometimes feel Blaine’s fingers running down his side, only to have them disappear as consciousness overtook him. In the tub, he would close his eyes and remember the bath Blaine had first made for him the day before he had left, only for Kurt to bring him back. Night was the worst, remembering how often he and Blaine would let their bodies tangle together, remembering the taste of his lips and the rub of his beard, remembering how nothing else mattered in those private moments but the fact that he was safe and loved and wanted.

In the field though, Kurt hoped that Blaine was alright. Hoped that he would be able to move on and ensure that his sacrifice meant something. In his mind’s eye, he would picture Blaine in their home… his home now, perhaps with a new puppy that he would train and cuddle with. In time perhaps he’d find someone new who could be all the things Blaine deserved, and pamper Blaine in a way that Kurt never could.  

Kurt made shot after shot after shot telling himself those things. Telling himself that Blaine was better off without him there. That Blaine deserved better. That Blaine didn’t need him. That Blaine’s love for him would fade.

Sometimes people would come to watch. Not people, he would have to remind himself, Others. One of the things that stuck out to him was the lack of children in this society. When he had been practicing with his bow and arrow in the community, it was the children who watched him. Here, it was adults.

Most of which were probably centuries old and yet watched him with childlike awe.  

Kurt ignored them at first, burying arrow after arrow into the dummy and pointedly avoiding looking their way. But one day he finally snapped when an image of Blaine with a faceless man crossed through his head unbidden. “What the hell is so bloody interesting about me?!”

Children would have gone wide eyed and scattered away, but Others merely tipped their head in curiosity at the outburst. Finally, one of them spoke.

“You have magic. Why use weapons?”

Kurt’s mind took him back then to the white haired Halfling girl, the one who used a sword. “I’ve seen Halflings with weapons before.”

“Only the ones without magic use weapons. You have magic.”

It didn’t cross his mind until then that some of these creatures might not have magic, and he couldn’t help but feel a little bit smug about the fact that that woman didn’t have magic and he, with less magical blood than her, did.  

That was the first time Kurt agreed to socialize openly with Others, taking up the offer of the one doing the talking to have tea and chat. Where humans liked alcohol, Others liked tea, and it was one small thing he could appreciate about their tastes.  

“I can’t control my abilities like everyone else seems to be able to do,” Kurt admitted, sitting at a table in the Other equivalent of a bar with a cup of what tasted like licorice tea in front of him. He had been joined by three others, including a rosy cheeked, red haired Halfling named Midhir that did most of the talking and was the one that had invited him.

“Well that’s just because you haven’t been trained,” Midhir said with a smirk and shake of his head. He had to be the most human looking Halfling Kurt had come across, and perhaps that was why Kurt felt compelled to speak to him so openly.

“Where do I get training?”

“There are trainers… has Elizabeth not taken you to one?” a girl named Morri asked, long brown hair braided over her shoulder with eyes that were solid black. Where humans identified themselves with the jobs they did, Others identified with the magic they had, and Morri had proudly noted she was a dream-sneaker, one who could slip into the unconscious minds of others and make suggestions or take them over completely.

Kurt shook his head, sipping his tea and looking down into the murky black drink as he thought. The color reminded him of Blaine’s hair.

“We can show you if you like,” the third stated blandly. Aengus, Midhir’s less human looking brother whose red hair was more auburn than orange.

“Perhaps another day,” Kurt suggested, eyes still fixed on the mug of twisting black liquid. Blaine would have hated the flavor of the tea he was drinking.

The threesome continued to come watch Kurt knock arrows into his dummies, not every day but certainly every other, and Kurt continued to draw a crowd as he practiced the skill he told himself he wouldn’t forget. His shooting arm grew stronger than it had ever been with the dedicated practice, and soon he had his admirers creating new targets for him to shoot at, including some kind of magically powered device that threw up colored puffs of smoke. Whenever he hit one of those moving targets they cheered for him.

They… cheered for…. him.

Kurt tried not to let it get to him, tried to focus instead on why he was shooting those damned arrows each day, tried to think of Beth, Santana, Mike… Blaine. They would be getting on without him, shouldn’t he get on without them? This was going to be his life from here on out after all.  

They cheered.

“Why don’t you take me to one of those trainers you talked about?” Kurt asked of Midhir, one day after decimating a new dummy into a pile of fuzz and stuffing.

Midhir just nodded, as if he’d been expecting it all this time, and led Kurt down the streets to a building labeled, innocuously enough, as a school. Though unlike any school Kurt had ever seen, there weren’t any desks or youth. Instead there were large rooms, each one with a different overseer, or trainer, and not much else.  

Midhir led Kurt past a few of these classrooms, and finally to one where he introduced Kurt to a wizened old woman with her hair done up in a bun that reminded Kurt of his paternal grandmother. Unlike his grandmother though, she was still gorgeous despite a parchment on the wall stating she had been an official trainer for some nine centuries. Kurt didn’t need to be heterosexual to see that the woman was beautiful, especially when Midhir damn near drooled everytime he looked at the woman.

“My name is Mab. I specialize in protective casting. I would be honored to serve as your trainer.”

Kurt nodded, catching himself from asking her price like he might have back in human society. There wasn’t currency here. People did things because it was their job to, and people helped out one another.

Maybe it wasn’t all bad in this place.

Kurt worked with her from then on out, still practicing his archery in the afternoons though not for as long as he had been each day. She was exhausting, demanding, and yet Kurt thought Midhir couldn’t have come up with a better match for his teacher than her. Each day she expected more of Kurt, and though Kurt struggled to develop his skill, he was still learning a lot. She had him read up on the different powers that were known to exist, and about the balance between all the powers. Just like Kurt had once learned in science, in magic there were equal and opposite forces. No one was all powerful because there was someone, or some magic, that could throw you off balance.

It didn’t help him forget about Blaine though.

Nothing helped him forget. In the morning he still called for Blaine as he awoke, then would let disappointment overcome him when he remembered Blaine wasn’t there. Kurt could never quite get over how cold it was to sleep alone, even though there was no winter where he now lived. In his most desperate moments, when he’d touch himself in the bath, he’d pull his hand away before anything could come of his masturbation. He felt guilty about seeking release if Blaine wasn’t the one to bring him to it.

“I’d like to take you somewhere,” Elizabeth said by way of greeting him one morning on his waking. How she was always there, no matter how early or late he slept, was beyond Kurt, but he also didn’t know where she lived even after spending several months in this place, so he wasn’t about to ask her if she even did sleep.

He washed, dressed, and ate, as he did every morning. The food in this place was more than good, with fresh fruits and vegetables on every platter and more spices than he though humans knew existed. Everything was flavorful, and with the effort he was putting into archery and magic training, he had developed a new layer of muscle over the old.

Elizabeth led him down a path that neared the council meeting chambers, and for a while Kurt was worried that he’d be forced to face the council, and his grandfather apparent again, but she walked past that building, and into a small, park like area that was barely occupied. At the center of the park was an unattended pool of water in a white, circular tub, and above that were four pillars holding up a similarly white circular ceiling.

“What is it?” Kurt asked, following Elizabeth as she stepped up to the pool and knelt down, gesturing for Kurt to do the same.

“It’s a viewing pool. You asked if I really loved your father once….”

Kurt nodded, watching as her fingers skimmed over the water. She made it ripple with her touch, and when the ripples spanned out, they revealed a picture, not unlike the pictures he remembered seeing on television when he was younger, of a grave.

“Dad’s… grave….”  Kurt choked out, recognizing it immediately It wasn’t as he had left it though.  Snow was covering the ground, and the name written in the boulder he had rolled over it had been worn down by the elements so it was hardly readable.

“When I was pulled away from you both, I used to come here… watch you both through the water for hours on end. I watched you both cry over me, and I watched you move on. When The Tides happened, I watched you both run, and I hoped you’d both survive… and then I watched you cry over your dad when he died… and I cried too.”

“You… saw me…?”

Elizabeth nodded, still looking at the grave illuminated in the water. “I watched you grow up… from a boy into a man. It got harder as time went on though, seeing you able to live without me. I used to feel connected to you when you would go smell my old drawers or visit my human grave… but that happened less and less as you got older…”

“Why didn’t you show me this in the beginning?!” Kurt cried, tapping at the water frantically. He had one person in mind he wanted to see. One person who he thought of endlessly.

Elizabeth reached over, grasping his hand with her own to stop him from splashing them both.  “Because I wasted so much time here. I couldn’t stop you from growing up without me. I couldn’t help your dad when he fell to the ground. All this place did was make me feel useless and unnecessary.”

“Is this some preamble to how I could be useful to the people here mother? Because, if it is, you can do without all the bloody lead up,” Kurt huffed, still looking down at the water for a trace of anything, or, more specifically, anyone.

“You’re quick. Your dad was too - though more with the ridiculous jokes and pun.”  She sighed.  “Halflings can’t usually have children Kurt. You know that. It’s what makes you so special. If it weren’t for my magic I wouldn’t have been able to either, and it was okay, because I was happy to be with him for as long as I could. You weren’t in the plan.”

“Dad always said I was his happy accident…” Kurt murmured, recalling the chuckle his dad let out when he said it.

“I told him that a doctor had said it wasn’t likely that I could have kids. A lie, but not untrue given what I knew. He didn’t care. He still wanted to be with me… and then you came along…  I didn’t tell anyone, you know. Not a soul. They discovered you without me telling them about you.”

“Why protect me though mother? What was the point? Don’t you think I would have been safer here? Don’t you know what one of their little groups did to me and to the people I lived with?”

She nodded slowly, not meeting his eyes. “I knew.”

“Yet you still want me to go and knock up some random woman I won’t have any connection with, much less enjoy the process of being with.”

“If you can have kids Kurt… it would give you someone here to love.” That was when she looked up, and it was the first time Kurt had seen tears in the eyes of any Other he had met. “It would make you able to move on. It would give you a real purpose that I can’t seem to offer you.”

Kurt nibbled over his lower lip, glancing from his mother to the pool and then back up again.

“... and I’ll show you how to see him in the pool if you agree to do it. If you agree to having a future here, I can show you how to see your past.”

 

 


	36. Chapter 33: The Vault

_**“The lotus comes from the murkiest water but grows into the purest thing.” - Nita Ambani** _

Blaine swayed back and forth in the rickety wooden chair that was definitely not meant to be rocked, with the way it knocked its legs with sharp thuds against the ground in whatever direction he was leaning into at the time. The window he was looking out of was showing the same scene it had been for the past two days - a blizzard, whistles of sharp wind blowing around frigid white dust with extreme prejudice. He had initially thought he could still drive through it when he had awoken the morning after arriving at this place, but when he had gotten outside he couldn’t even open his eyes because his lashes became so heavy with the snowflakes affixing to them and when he did manage to slit them open, he couldn’t see past his nose with all the white, whirling microscopic bits of ice the wind was shooting up.

So Blaine had stayed in the little mountain town, named by its residents as Haven, and tried to occupy himself in the hopes the blizzard would die down enough for him to get back on the road. He had stayed with the towns headman, the old, permanently scowling woman who was glaring at him presently as he restlessly banged the chair against the floor. She had been kind enough to let him stay, though that seemed to be the end of her good-naturedness as she complained about having another mouth to feed in town, how he apparently snored at night, and that he was also an idiot for trying to get closer to the Others instead of further away from them. All that being said though, she still insisted that he stay with her instead of some other lodging while he was trapped in the mountains. Either she didn’t trust him enough for him to be with other people under her watch, or she was curious enough about him that she wanted him to stay close in case he revealed any information he might have had. Blaine wasn’t speaking that much though. He had kept his mouth closed for so long now that it seemed alien to speak socially. He spoke enough to discover the residents had no fuel of their own in this place, and only had food for trade, and that was the end of it.  

The curiosity around him had abated. The first day he had been stuck in town, people came to ask him questions, wondering if he might know certain family or friends they had long ago lost to the Tides. Of course he didn’t know anyone they mentioned though. It was never that easy.  Then he had questions about the community he had left behind, which he answered plainly without revealing too much information. He didn’t know these people well enough to trust them with information about his home, or what had been his home when Kurt had been there to share it with him. If there was a chance that someone would use the information about his community to hurt the people there, Blaine couldn’t take it, and so he gave as much misinformation as he could just in case.

The woman he was staying with called him out on it earlier today. She had watched him the entire time he spoke with others in the mess hall.  

“They don’t have the means or motivation to leave this place. Why would it hurt to tell them the truth about where you came from?”

“Because I don’t trust them, just like you don’t trust me.”

That had shut her up for the time being, though it didn’t stop her from glowering his way whenever he looked away from the window, where he was trying to will nature to calm down so he could move along. He knew when his welcome had worn out, and it was yesterday.

“Why are you really going to the coast?”

Blaine perked his head up and looked over at the woman, one he still didn’t know the name of. It hadn’t crossed his mind to ask her, and she had never introduced herself. There was nothing in her home to identify herself either. If he had to give her a name it would have been one of those names that had faded into obscurity with age, reserved only for old women like Olga or Agnes. She was fairly ancient looking after all. White hair peppered with silver tied back in a bun on the back of her head with loose wisps coming loose and tickling along her neckline where a weathered silver chain fell down between her breasts, loose skin holding aloft bags of fat, and hiding the pendant that it held. In the comfort of her own home, with the fireplace constantly going, she wore an ankle length skirt she had belted up right below her bosom, which in turn was covered by a white blouse that had long been stained yellow with age. She looked like what Blaine imagined the picture of a spinster might if he looked it up in a picture dictionary.

“Personal reasons.”

“Obviously dumb shit. What kind of personal reasons would make you take such a risk is what I’m wondering.”

Blaine sighed, tilting his head back against the top of the chair and glancing up at the ceiling. Someone had once smoked in this home given how bisque-colored the ceiling was. It hadn’t been her though, or if it had been, she had quit, because he hadn’t seen a cigarette in her mouth, nor the oral tics those that had been forced to give up smoking had.  

“You going to tell me or just mope around like a little shit until the weather calms?”

“I was going to go for the latter,” Blaine uttered upwards. Clearly this woman had not won her position based on her charisma, since Blaine had seen her be equally crude with the residents of Haven. She had patience for no-one and nothing.

“Did they take something from you? Or someone?”

He swallowed, and given the way she smugly snickered at the motion, he knew he had given himself away. She could clearly read people in a way that he couldn’t, and his unconscious nervous reaction had told her all she wanted to know.

“Wife? Daughter?”

“Husband,” Blaine relented, looking down from the ceiling and back to her. If she had to know, at least it would be on his terms.

“Huh. A fudge-packer. Beard threw me off.”

He watched as she rubbed the chain of her necklace between two fingers by her neck. Every now and then he caught her doing it and he presumed it must be because it had been a gift from a lover or a child once, long ago, before The Tides took those people away. Many people had similar things. Mercedes had a pair of earrings from her mother she always touched when she wore them, just to make sure she hadn’t lost them. Sam had a ring his dad had given him before he went away to visit the cousins he had run with that he always turned around his finger when he was remembering something of the past. Blaine wished he had something like that of Kurt’s. Something that would make him feel more connected to him when he wasn’t there. If he found Kurt, it was something he was going to rectify.

“So you’re going to go avenge your husband’s death, like they really would care -”

“He’s alive,” Blaine corrected her. “They took him away.”

“They don’t take people away.  They kill them.”

“He’s not like other people.”

Her eyes narrowed, darkening even more than he thought they were capable of as she quietly regarded him and continued to play with the chain of her necklace in her fingers. “Is he a halfling?”

Blaine shook his head. “No.”

“‘cause I was going to say, with a necklace of halfling ears in your luggage, that’d make for a questionable marriage.”

For the second time that evening, she had thrown him off. When had she the chance to check his cargo? He returned her stare, a silent challenge. Something was not quite right about this woman, and more than just her needing to lighten up a little.

“Hard to sleep when you’re sawing logs something fierce,” she snapped, catching onto his unverbalized question. “I took the liberty to check your inventory while you slept.”

“You had no right.”

“I had every right. This is my community. My Haven. These are my people. I needed to ensure you weren’t carrying anything that could get them hurt.”

“Then why not search me when you accepted me in?”

She glanced away, and even though he didn’t know how he had done it, he had somehow taken her off guard. “Because it wasn’t necessary then.”

“Wait….” Blaine blinked his eyes a few times and then stood up, “how did you know they were Halfling ears and not just Other ears?”

He heard her gulp, and as she continued to avert her gaze, he saw the glint of the pendant as it lifted from between her sagging cleavage as she rolled the chain around her finger. In a flash he had lunged across the room and grabbed the pendant, which was in fact a copper coin that was all too familiar to him. It was the same as the one Kurt had used to be transported away. The same the white-eyed Other had gifted him with.

“Where the hell did you get this?! Are you one of them?!”

She choked as he yanked her along with the coin, and futilely tried to pull herself and it back along with her. In order to get a response, Blaine had to loosen his grip on the piece, but only enough to allow her to take in a breath.

“No…. not one of them,” she finally heaved out in sputtered breath, turning her head up to look at him defiantly. “Let me go.”

“Not until you tell me the truth. Why do you have this? Who are you?”

She glared for a minute more, and Blaine matched her at it in a quiet standoff before she relented and tossed her head back, loose strands of hair going behind her ears in the act. “I’m not an Other, or a Halfling.”

“Then how do you have one of these?!”

“My son is a Halfling.”

Blaine watched her eyes, her lips, and her movements in general for signs of deception. He found none. “So you’re allied with them.”

“Hardly,”  she spat, and while Blaine might have felt bad about keeping her standing up on her toes in order to adjust to the way he was holding the coin in his hand, he also knew she had the option to give up the necklace, something she was clearly not keen on doing.

“Explain.”

“I was young, foolish. I thought I was in love. He was such a charmer, and so god damned handsome. Classically so, like Clark Gable and Cary Grant… before I knew it I was unmarried, pregnant, and alone.”

“When was that?’

“Nineteen thirty three….”

Blaine tried to do the math in his head, but was coming up empty with the adrenaline running through him, leaving little room for reasoning. “How old are you?”

“A hundred two.”

Blaine had to give her another look up and down. Was he really that bad with ages that he thought she was, at best, seventy?  

“Parenting a Halfling extends the life of the human involved,” she supplied, Blaine’s mind making a small ‘oh’ internally, as if it were enough to make sense of it all.

“And then?”

“And then when my son, Robert, was about fourteen he started showing… skills. His father returned, showed his true form. Told me what to do if I wanted to remain connected with Robert.”

Blaine nodded to the coin he had held in his hand, “the coin… it allowed you to speak with him.”

She nodded slowly, “yes.”

“Contact him then. Tell them I want to talk to them!”

She snickered and shook her head, “doesn’t work that way. I don’t have their powers. They can contact me but I can’t contact them.”

“And you allege to be taking care of the people here...” Blaine snarled, letting go of the coin and allowing her to stumble back before catching herself against the chair he had pulled her out of. “You’re just a spy for a man who was using you and a son that clearly preferred to live with his father.”

She snorted contemptuously, straightening her clothing out and tucking the coin back between her deflated breasts. “I am one of many. The Others have pulled back, and have allowed humans to live once more in case you haven’t noticed… but we have to watch our numbers. They are afraid of us getting too numerous. I put myself in charge of this area, and no one contested it because in the time before The Tides, I was a well respected bureaucrat. I make sure we abide by their wishes so that the people here can live without fear of repercussion.”

“But they don’t know what you are.”

She shook her head. “No. Of course not. Old. Not stupid.”

“How often do they contact you?” Blaine asked, storming his way back to the seat he had originally occupied. She wasn’t going to run after all, and now that both of their secrets were out, there was nothing to hide between them.

“Last time was just under a year ago… Robert wanted to wish me a Merry Christmas. He remembered how much that time of year meant to me when it was just him and I. They don’t have holidays like humans do, you know?”

He ignored the underlying tone of nostalgia in her voice. Almost a year. He couldn’t wait for the odd chance that she’d be contacted again. He’d have to move ahead regardless of this discovery.  

“You’re not going to tell them… are you?”

Blaine shook his head, resuming his absent stare outside, “No.  Some secrets aren’t worth the pain of spilling.”

 

* * *

 

Either through divine intervention or just because it had run out of steam, the blizzard died out overnight, and Blaine was once again on the road the following morning. He received waves goodbye from the townsfolk that he didn’t return as he set his sights on the journey ahead. It crossed his mind that the blizzard had been some kind of intervention to stop him from reaching Kurt, but that thought passed out of his mind as quickly as it had come. Surely, just as the old woman had said, he was of little concern to the Others. They didn’t care for him as separate from any other human.  

Haven was the only mountain village he came across on his travels, and he was certainly relieved when the landscape shifted from rocks to rolling hills under him. It had been a long time since he had been in these parts, but he knew well enough to know not to expect any land that was perfectly horizontal for awhile. The west side of the mountain range was more dynamic than its eastern counterpart, a fact that made him sweat as he funnelled the last mason jar of fuel into his tank. Hills took more power to drive up and down, more gas consumption, and he still wasn’t close enough to the coast to want to think about having to walk in the snow yet. He should have packed snowshoes, but despite all his careful planning, the thought to bring them had evaded him.

He came across another settlement not long after hitting the hills in what had been British Columbia. There were about fifty people in this smaller grouping, mostly family units that had banded together. Again they confirmed that there had been no Other patrols in the area for years, and as Blaine scanned the group, he wondered who among them might be an agent for the Others, like the woman in Haven had been. How many mothers and fathers had sold themselves into the service of the Others in the hopes of being able to contact their child once in a blue moon?

Not that he was any better, so willing to give himself up in order to see Kurt if only for a moment more.

The settlement had no fuel to offer him, but were able to trade for food and give him information on Halfling camps other travellers had reported when they had come through the area. Blaine marked the information on his maps and thanked them all before continuing onward, wishing it were summer instead of winter, and that the days were longer so he could have travelled further in the daylight offered to him.

He pulled into what was left of a barn, though the land had reclaimed most of it - sinking walls into the earth and roof mostly open where rotten boards had fallen below. There he stayed, making a small fire and eating a small amount of rations as he stared up at the night sky and wondered if Kurt was able to see the same stars he did, and if he missed him as much as Blaine missed Kurt.

There was a time Blaine knew the constellations by heart. He remembered pointing up at them with Jeff on one side and Trent on the other. Together they had been able to map them out and help one another see the images people had so long ago placed upon them. It had been years since he had really, truly looked at the stars though. His nights had been happily spent inside with Kurt, and the cold climate where they lived didn’t allow them the luxury of staying outside at night. Blaine tried to piece together the stars before him, tried to recall what picture they were supposed to make when put together, but the name evaded him. Not even the stars here gave him any familiar comfort. They were as foreign as the brown grass he had laid back on.  

He had to remind himself that it would all be worth it. This journey would either result in being reunited with Kurt or would end him, and in each case he would be satisfied with the result. It might have been a bit overdramatic, but he couldn’t see anything in between those two options.

He woke up with the sun, climbing aboard the Canary without bothering to eat, and making his way further down what had been a road years before. Blaine didn’t slow for the bumps, letting them jostle him and wear out what little shocks he had left in order to keep himself awake for the drive and ensure he maximized his gas usage. He should have taken a horse, he told himself as the sun lifted overhead from behind him; while it might not be as fast, it wouldn’t need anything more than the grass and snow to keep itself moving each day.

Another needless mistake on his part, one that he swore at himself for when the Canary began to putter and slow not long after, just as the sun started to shine in his eyes. He argued with it for awhile, then pleaded for it to work, even for just a moment more. Blaine went so far as dumping water into the gas tank in the hopes that would make it go, groaning in defeat when all he got in return was a squealing noise and then nothing.

He packed up everything he could into his backpack and continued the journey on foot, leaving the Canary behind. He walked until nightfall, using one of the pills he had stolen then to help alleviate the sore cramping in his legs. It took him longer to fall asleep with the pain creeping up his body from walking so hard, for so long, that night, and in the morning he had to fight with himself to get up, his body, and legs in particular, now stiff and swollen. He was sure he had blisters, but didn’t dare stop to check as he forged ahead, because there was nothing he could do about them even if he did stop.  

Blaine hated walking. He figured out that he was now travelling in one day, what he would have in one hour of driving - if that long. As he passed farms, he looked for vehicles or horses that might have been left behind there. Hell, even riding a bicycle in the winter had to be better than walking. He had no luck though, and eventually accepted his slow pace and hardened legs as a necessity over the next several days.

He had been walking for about a week when he came across another human encampment, and he had to double check his map to make sure its existence made sense. Back in his Warbler days, no humans had thought to live so close to the coast (even though he was still days away by foot), but now there was a busy little town there, and he saw that they had horses.

“Can I talk to whomever is in charge here?” he said to a woman who ducked away from him as he approached.

“Jus’... you stay there!”

She ran off, and Blaine looked down at the ice he had uncovered with his footprints at what he could make out of his reflection. He looked like some kind of mountain man. His beard had never grown out so much, nor as wild. His hair wasn’t much better, and his skin looked chapped and peeling. The winter elements had clearly had an effect on him, one that he’d have to deal with if he wanted to look presentable for Kurt.

The woman came back not a minute later with two men behind her. One lifted a gun up by means of threat, and Blaine lifted his hands up. “I’m just passing through. Looking to maybe make some trades, and get something to eat.”

“Right. We’ve heard that before. C’mon,” the man with the gun said, gesturing with it that Blaine should follow the man beside him as he took position behind Blaine. It seemed a little over the top to Blaine, but who knew what harm these people had faced before and what lengths they had to go to to ensure their safety. He complied with the order and trailed along with the men to a building that had once served as a bank, given the words almost worn off on the window, and let himself be taken in.

“Look… I don’t mean any harm… I’m honestly just here to -”  Blaine started again, as they took him to an office within the old bank. His words were choked short though as he saw who was there waiting for him.

“Seb - Sebastian?”

The years had been good to his old lover turned traitor, who didn’t look much older than he had the last time Blaine had seen him aside from more wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and more leather in his skintone. While he recognized Sebastian though, Sebastian had to look him over a few times before the recognition set in his green eyes, widening and then narrowing as he spat.

“Blaine.”

“How did you -”

“The people you choose over us. Remember? They drove us out here.”

The guys on either side of Blaine were obviously confused by the interaction, sharing glances with one another and then directing those glances to Sebastian who waved them off.  “He’s not a threat to me. You can go stand outside the door.”

Just like that, they left Blaine alone with Sebastian, with more questions than answers.  The door was shut behind him and Sebastian ignored him for the moment as he poured himself a shot of whiskey from a bottle on his desk and sipped it back before looking over his shoulder at Blaine.

“God. You look like fucking hell. Weren’t for your eyes I wouldn’t have recognized you at all.”

Blaine glanced over his own shoulder at the door closing him in the room with Sebastian and then looked back to Sebastian from where he was hovering by the doorway. “I’ve been on the road.”

“They boot you out too?”

Blaine shook his head. “No… I’m going to the coast.”

Something within Blaine told him he should be feeling anything except the nothingness he was. He should have felt angry, for this was the guy who nearly killed Kurt and himself. He should have felt sad, for seeing how well Sebastian seemed to be doing compared to himself. He should have felt happy, to know that Sebastian appeared to have turned over a new leaf. He felt none of that though. All he felt was that this was just one more thing happening that was getting in the way of him finding Kurt.

“What the fuck is at the coast?”

“Kurt.”

“Oh.” Sebastian poured himself another drink, not bothering to offer one to Blaine. “Your little Halfling piece of ass you chose over me.”

Blaine winced, recalling how angry Sebastian had looked when he had told him he wasn’t going to go along with his plan to take over the community, and then the shock of being hit so hard by him that it knocked him out. “It wasn’t just for him… and he’s not a Halfling.”

“Well he’s certainly fucking something more than normal that you threw away years of friendship for him and now are apparently tracking his runaway ass down.”

He didn’t have time for this. As much as he wondered what had happened and how Sebastian had gotten to the point of being in charge of a whole settlement of humans, Blaine didn’t have the patience for it. “Look. I just wanted to know if you had a horse to trade or something else I could use to get there.”

“Hunter died, you know,”  Sebastian muttered, sitting himself down in the chair behind his desk and propping his heels up on the table. “They left us out here without anything, and Hunter got mauled by a cougar. We had nothing to patch him up with, not even a damned thing to give him to help with the pain.”

Blaine grimaced and leaned against the doorframe. “Some people wanted to just kill you all outright for what you did… it was a better option…”

“It was a cowardly option. You should have had us all killed. We wanted to go back there, kill you all in your sleep.”

“Like you did to Charles.”

Sebastian locked eyes with Blaine as Blaine remembered the once-Warbler that had died in the middle of the night. Charles had been diabetic, and it had been getting more and more difficult to find the insulin he needed to survive. Sebastian had been the one to argue that Charles needed to go, and then, conveniently, Charles had died in the night. No one had questioned it at the time, but Blaine had known what had happened. He had been involved with Sebastian at the time, and Charles’ death was what had spurred Blaine to end things between them. In retrospect, Blaine should have said or done something more.

“Charles would have gotten the whole group killed,” Sebastian finally said, his green eyes darkening. Not an admission, but certainly not a denial either. “It was for the best that he died.”

“What did you have to do to get in this position of power Sebastian? Who did you have to kill here?”

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed, quietly assessing Blaine whose body was either tense from strained muscles or from the adrenaline pumping through him. It was likely a mix of both factors.

“Riley! Derrick! Come here please!” Sebastian shouted, summoning back the two men that had escorted Blaine to the room with an opening of the door behind him.

“Imprison this man in the vault.”

Blaine’s eyes rounded and he immediately tried to turn and run, getting grabbed at both elbows by the men who roughly dragged him further into the building despite his attempts to break free. “Let me go! I was just passing through! You can’t keep me here!”

He was smaller though, certainly weaker, unprepared for this turn of events, and found himself being thrown into an empty concrete room with a heavy bolted door swinging shut before he could get back onto his feet and try to fight against it. Blaine pushed against it, yelling at the top of his lungs at the injustice that had been done against him, and then, when all his energy reserves were spent, he slumped down against the door and sobbed into his hands. This couldn’t be how his mission to find Kurt would end.  Locked in a pitch black room that felt colder inside than it did outside the building.  Put there by a man he had long put out of his mind who obviously still considered him a threat.  This couldn’t be how it ended.

He had to feel around the edges of the room in order to find the corners, since there was no light within it, and it was in the furthest corner that he used to relieve himself when he needed to.  Blaine hollered and screamed when he had the voice to do so, but he got hoarse quickly, and no one responded to his calls.  Without the light, it was impossible to tell how much time had passed in the vault he was being held captive in, and he wasn’t sure if the naps he took were really just naps or night-time worthy slumbers.  

It stunk in the vault, and it struck him that he probably wasn’t the first person to be trapped within it and to use the corners for the bathroom given the severity of the smell.  Even at his worst, when he was so far sunk into his depression that he didn’t rise out of bed, he knew he didn’t smell as bad as it did in the vault.  When he slept, he did so with an ear pressed against the door, in hopes that he’d be able to hear if someone came and would be able to scurry out before they knew what was happening if they did open the door.

He wasn’t fed, and the growling of his stomach soon was louder than he could make his voice.  It stopped though after a time, giving up on the hope for food as Blaine was giving up on the thought that he would be allowed out of the room Sebastian had so cruelly had him tossed into.  This was his punishment.  He would die a slow death in the vault, haunted by the thought that he had been so close to the coast only to be trapped.  At some point they had even taken his pack from him, and he didn’t even know when it had happened in the fray.  

Blaine had imagined that this trip might end in his death, but had put more stock into finding Kurt and being reunited with him.   He hadn’t mentally prepared for death, and certainly not in this manner.  He would starve, and become a stiff corpse in a dark room, and the last man he spoke to would be Sebastian.  It wasn’t right, but if there was one thing he could stomach, it was the knowledge that things weren’t always right, or fair, or just in the world.  Sometimes, things just simply were.

Like the place he was in wasn’t really a vault, but a tomb.

 

 


	37. Chapter 34: Reflected

_** ** _

_**“I used to believe that love was finding someone who would lead you through the deep water.” - Anne Hathaway** _

 

Kurt pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, squinting his eyes shut for a moment to try and let his pupils refocus themselves. He had been reading the texts Mab had set in front of him for hours now, trying to make sense of them and only becoming more and more frustrated by content and ideas that were above him. She might as well have been trying to teach him nuclear physics given how he didn’t have the fundamental understandings for it, much less what she was trying to push into his mind. It was pointless.

“Can’t read if your eyes aren’t open boy,” the woman snapped from across the room where she was writing something - with a quill no less. Not only had she been training for centuries, but she certainly didn’t make the effort to use any technology from after that point in time.

“It’s nonsensical,” Kurt grumbled, slamming the book shut in front of him as he looked over at her. “I don’t know what half these words mean, and the other half don’t make sense when they’re put together.”

“You’re overthinking it.”

He rolled his eyes. The act was lost though on Mab though as she didn’t even look his way as he did it, focused solely on whatever the hell she was writing.  

“Teach me how to use the pool of water behind the council’s meeting room.”

It wasn’t the first time he had asked her, and, given the way she ignored the question in previous attempts, it probably wouldn’t be the last. Kurt had implored his mother for time to think about her offer when she had proposed it. After all, having a child was a big deal - at least where he came from, and in his view of the future, there had always been Blaine there to raise a child with. The problem in the past was that he and Blaine had no way to make a child together, and now the problem was that there was no Blaine there to help him parent. It was a trivial matter to his mother, who argued that she would be there to help and that parenting wasn’t seen the same way in this place as it was in human society. Children weren’t claimed so insistently as they were by humans, nor was their upbringing burdened on one or two individuals. Everyone assisted in the raising of the child, and everyone was seen as equally important regardless if they contributed the sperm or egg in its creation.  

A part of Kurt understood and even appreciated that sensibility, but the part of him that remembered his dad so fondly, and even his mother when she was more… human, had a hard time stomaching it. If he had a child, and perhaps this was selfish on his part, he wanted to be one of the most important, if not the most important, person in its life.

“I can’t teach you that,” Mab responded curtly, not looking up from her work still.

“Why not?” It was the most of a response he had gotten out of her on the matter, and even though it sounded like rejection, it peaked his interest.

“Just like I can not help you with those texts. You have to make a translation for yourself for it to make sense.”

He groaned, slumping down and banging his head against the old, leather bound book. “I hate it when you talk like some old, mystical sensei. You sound like someone out of those ninja or superhero cartoons I watched as a kid.”

“Cartoons?”

He sighed. “Nevermind. Human thing.”

“Mmmhmmm. Now read.”

Again he flipped open the book, and again he stared at the pages as if just by looking at them they’d start to make sense. He didn’t even know what he was supposed to be getting out of the books he was being forced to read. It wasn’t like the textbooks he had in school with Science or Mathematics plastered over the front cover and notes along the sides of the pages with extra information on important concepts or graphs and pictures to help him understand materials. This was just line after line of words that didn’t flow together, much less relate in a lot of cases. Every now and then a little pictogram would be inserted among the letters and for no purpose whatsoever. Maybe if he was reading this as a child, with him imagination intact, he would get something out of it. But right now, all he was getting was irritated.

“Listen to this Mab. Butterfly wise white green… a picture of an eye… denotes the beginning of class. How the hell am I supposed to understand that?!” Kurt read aloud, selecting a line that was typical of the work, and then expressing the problem he had with what came out of his mouth.

“Hmm… Is that what it says for you?”

“What it says for me?” He spread his hands out to either side and looked the line over again, “Yeah. That’s exactly what it says.”

She stood up then, delicately setting the quill down on its side and stepping over to him before looking down at the page he had been reading. “To me it reads that the dark is coming, and specters are looming nearby.”

He glanced around, just to ensure she wasn’t being literal with the specters part, and then looked up at her, “Yeah. That still makes no sense.”

“How does something make sense Kurt?”

He shrugged, looking back down at the paper. More and more she was speaking like an adult version of the wise teachers in the Saturday morning cartoons he used to watch in his pyjamas with his dad. In the cartoons though, their messages were easy enough to figure out.  Be kind to others, don’t litter, sharing is caring, and other propaganda directed to youth to make them better citizens.  Mab said a lot, but nothing much came out of it. Maybe he was used to having to be direct with his words. There hadn’t been time or effort to waste, after all, in the community on flowering words up. Everyone had jobs to do, and only so much time to do it in.  

“Why does one thing make sense and the other doesn’t? Why is one thing logical and the other isn’t? You use your human mind too much in these matters… you place limits on things that don’t have natural limits. They are subjective, and your subjection is biased because of your short side.”

Short side, Kurt had learned, was a derogatory term for his human half, or, as the case was, his three-quarters part. He had never been the tallest guy around the community, but there he was at least taller than most of the women. Here he was easily the shortest of everyone.

“I can’t overcome something that runs in my blood Mab.”

“Then use it to your advantage.”

He sighed. He did a lot of that when it came to her lessons, or, what she thought were lessons since he wasn’t learning a damned thing from them. She must have actually sensed his exasperation, for once, at that point though, because she continued to speak.

“I can’t teach you to use the pool because I am not you. Nor can Elizabeth truly teach you either. She can only tell you how she is able to use it.  What you have within you is unique to you, and only you can learn to harness it…”

“Then why bother with all… this?” Kurt grumbled, gesturing his hands over the books laying on the table in front of him.

“To support your learning. To give it context. To supplement. To learn magic is not like learning human language where you learn things piece by piece and then put them together. It is not something from outside you bring inside of you. Magic is inside you and must be pulled out, and it is different for everyone.”

“I wish I could say that what you were saying was actually helpful Mab… and not just more goobly-gook for my brain to somehow fixate on…”

“Goobly-gook?”

Another sigh. “Human term my dad used…. for things that didn’t make sense.”

“Again with the focus on things making sense.  You need to stop putting limits on things.”

So Kurt returned to glaring at the words, if only to stop Mab from giving more unhelpful suggestions. He gave himself a headache by the end of his lessons for that day, and by the time he got out to what had become his archery range, he was more than happy to sink a dozen arrows into the dummy across from him.  

“My lessons aren’t teaching me a damned thing,”  he grumbled to Midhir when the redhead crept up to his side. “They’re a waste of time.”

“Ah. On the bit about how you have to figure things out for yourself, huh?”

Kurt released the arrow he had pulled back and then looked to Midhir beside him without watching where it hit - though, by the cheer the usual spectators gave, it was exactly where he intended. “How do I get past this point?”

Midhir made a small, apologetic shrug - clearly a carryover from his time growing up with a human family because it was a gesture Kurt had yet to see from any pureblood Other. “Exactly like she’s probably telling you… you have to figure it out.”

“For fuck sake’s…” Kurt snapped and pulled another arrow from his quiver to shoot at the puff of smoke someone had sent to the sky for him to hit. “... I don’t have time for mind games.”

“Don’t you?” Midhir asked, watching Kurt’s follow through and the subsequent hole made in the small cloud from his arrow splicing through it. “You need to be somewhere?”

“Well… no… I just… it seems like a waste of time.”

“You won’t live as long as a pureblood Kurt, but you also have a lot more time to live than a normal human does. Your time is only wasted if you decide it is.”

“My mother wants me to make her grandchildren,” Kurt noted, breaking the current train of dialogue with something that would, hopefully, give him less ambiguous responses.

“I wouldn’t doubt it, but, more likely, she’s being pressured to say as much from purebloods.”

“Why the fascination with procreation around here? You’d think with the way everyone expects it from me that you’d see more people around here with kids of their own…”

“Purebloods have the odd pureblood child together, but their interest is in strengthening the magic, and so Halflings are much more likely to be produced, and often end up living up top until their powers develop.”

“What about if the dad is human and the mother is pureblood?”

Midhir shifted on his feet. “My parents were a love match like that. We lived with them until my father passed on and then we came under the water.”

“So it’s not all mechanical like they make it…” Kurt noted, walking to collect his arrows with Midhir on his heels.

“For some of them it is… yes… but we’re all capable of falling in love just like humans do, but because of our longer life spans, we also know it’s not as big a deal because we can do it a few times over. The idea of a soulmate is a completely human creation, probably created to satisfy romantic ideals.  I’ve read some of their religious texts too… I would go so far as to say marriage to one person for a lifetime was probably also to solidify inheritance and property rights given some of the references to it alongside those of marriage in those kinds of books.”

Kurt yanked his arrows out of the dummy. Would he get over Blaine? Was it just that simple? He knew people could fall in love again after they lost someone. He had honestly been hoping his dad might find someone not long before he ended up dying, if only because Kurt knew his dad would be happier with someone to hold at night.  

“Do yourself a favor Kurt. Try to use the pool using your own magic. Don’t rely on what anyone else tells you to do or not to do, and don’t force it.”

Kurt frowned and narrowed his eyes as he looked to Midhir. He suspected that someone had been watching him each evening when he had gone to the pool and tried his luck at making it show him Blaine, but he assumed it had been his mother. “Snooping?”

“No. Just wondering,” Midhir supplied softly. “I apologize if I overstepped my boundaries of friendship though.”

“It’s fine…” Kurt sighed for the hundredth time that day. “There’s not much to wonder about. I want to see the… person I left behind.”

“Human?”

Kurt nodded, as if there would be anyone else given how he was stuck here and Blaine was up there, unable to reach him, and vice versa. “Blaine.”

“Blaine,” Midhir repeated, and somehow hearing that name on someone else’s tongue made Kurt’s heart prickle in pain. “Sibling? Lover? Friend?”

“Husband,” Kurt murmured, his voice dropping with the word. There had been no formal ceremony, or no verbal agreement for that matter either when it came to his and Blaine’s relationship. It had happened at a group dinner one day, Kitty had casually called Kurt Blaine’s husband in passing conversation and no one batted an eyelash at the term - aside from Kurt and Blaine themselves though. They had looked at one another across the table, and Blaine had let such a sweet, toothy grin creep over his face before he bashfully looked down at the potatoes on his plate. From then on, that’s what they were.

“Shame he wasn’t a female. If he were then you could see if you could parent a child with him… as a her,” Midhir half-joked. “Would work for both the council’s interests and your own.”

“I don’t like female bits,” Kurt grumbled, searching through the grasses for the one arrow that was eluding him. “Too soft.”

“Your preference of course,” Midhir said with a shrug before pointing out the missing arrow which Kurt went to collect. “But you know that they won’t care.”

“Isn’t there just some kind of test they could do to see if I can even father a child before they make these demands?”

Midhir gestured back towards town where they had their usual tea after Kurt had gotten his archery practice in, and Kurt nodded in agreement. “I thought they had. The information that circulated was that they had taken some kind of blood sample and the Ilu had tested it and seen that you were viable.”

“Uck…” Kurt wrinkled up his nose. “Is that how they put it? Not that they hacked and slashed at me and my friends, killed people I had known for most of my life to get at me, including my damned dog, and tortured us for information we didn’t have.”

Midhir was quiet momentarily, and then a simple, “No… that wasn’t what I heard.”

Kurt sat down at the usual table at the tea bar and leaned back in his seat once he had set his quiver down against the table leg. “Well, that’s what happened.”

“Unfortunate… Split-leaf with honey.” Midhir said. The first part was to Kurt, the second to the man who came to take their order - a magicless halfling who nodded to Midhir before looking to Kurt.

Kurt tried something new each time he came, and had yet to be disappointed with his choices aside from one, very bitter tasting concoction. “How about… the double-white?”

Another nod from the server and then Midhir and Kurt were left alone at the table again.  

“You know, I never went up there during what you call The Tides. They said I’m too young, too human yet, to understand… I heard some of the stories though, of course from their perspective… but yours is… unique.”

“Because I was on the other side of it,” Kurt muttered. “People were slaughtered.”

“That much I did know,” Midhir admitted, his shoulders quirking up in discomfort with the tone of the conversation. “They say they tried to do it humanely though. To stem the overpopulation…”

“Can’t be done humanely if you’re not human to begin with.” Kurt huffed, nodding his thanks to the server as their tea was set out in front of them. As the name suggested, this tea swirled with white and cream colors, and smelled of vanilla.  

“I’m not saying I agree with the choice of the council Kurt, nor am I saying that I think humanity wasn’t at a tipping point, but I am saying that I’m sorry for what happened to you… as a friend.”

Kurt looked down into his tea, watching the two tones of ivory wrap around one another and the steam slip off it in a translucent cloud.  

“Thanks.”

 

* * *

 

Later on, he laid beside the pool, running his fingers through the water and watching how the cuts he made with them made the water ripple outwards. Even if Kurt hadn’t been trying to conjure up an image of Blaine, this was the perfect place to relax. At first he didn’t understand why more people weren’t there, trying to summon up images of their family and friends up top, but then he remembered that all they needed was one of those coins and blood that carried magic to connect with them. In addition, those human families and friends that the Halflings had were probably long dead or forgotten. This pool might as well have been for him alone.

Kurt had tried every cheesy thing he could think of to make the water show him Blaine. He had thought of Blaine as he touched it, he had come up with a happy memory, he had uttered some of the nonsense words from the texts he had been studying at Mab’s school, he had even tried meditating as best as he knew how. None of it had done anything except tire him out even more, so now he was just half-dozing beside the water, letting his fingers flutter in and out of the water absently.

He was beginning to think the whole thing was some kind of scam designed to convince him to agree to his mother’s proposal.

“Kurt?”

He looked up and over his shoulder, spying his mother there with her hands clasped together in front of her stomach. She didn’t wait for him to acknowledge her with more than his eyes though as she extended a hand.  

“Please. Come for supper… at my home.”

He sat up, and then stood, ignoring the offered hand and following after her as she wove through the streets. This was the first time she had offered to show him where she lived, and given the way she was wringing her hands together as they walked together, Kurt had to wonder what the secrecy was all about.  Things had been tense between them since she had asked him about siring children, and her visits had become less, going so far as to not being there each morning when Kurt woke.

In the main town, most lived in identical row houses, or in apartments like the one Kurt had been assigned. There was no reason for having one over the other aside from preference, given that they all had the same amount of space per occupant when it was all calculated out. Having a row home offered more amenities within the home compared to an apartment though, and Kurt could certainly see the appeal given how private he considered himself.  Currently he had to go out to eat all the time, and he still wasn’t used to people always being around for that.

“I loved your dad Kurt… I still do…” Elizabeth said, pausing as she put her hand on the knob of one of many houses lined up along the street she had slowed her walking down on. Scanning it over, Kurt couldn’t see anything that would make this home different from the rest of them. No individualization, nothing that made it stand out, nothing that the human side of his mother would have ensured with her lawn ornaments and christmas lights that she once insisted on.

“I know… at least… you already said as much.”

She sighed, a sound that reflected so much of Kurt’s own voice, and then turned the knob. Kurt hadn’t been in one of the row homes yet, and looked around at the sparse decorations, hoping to find something of his human mother in there, but not seeing anything aside from an additional set of shoes at the door - too big for her feet.

“Is he here?” a male voice spoke from down the hallway where the entrance was, and Kurt looked up from the shoes with wide eyes at the pointy-eared man that was certainly not his father standing a few feet away.

“Kurt. This is Claudius. Claudius - Kurt.”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Elizabeth had brought him here for more than supper. This was a formal introduction to the fact that she had moved on from her life with Burt. This Other, and Kurt couldn’t tell offhand if he was pure blooded or Halfling, who churned up a smile as he walked over to them both and then, seeming to recall something that might have been said to him, offered his hand over to Kurt for a shake.

“Good to meet you.”

Very slowly, cautiously even, as if the man might have an electric buzzer in his palm, Kurt took the offered hand and shook it once before releasing it and looking towards his mother as he sought an explanation for this entrapment. He hated surprises, especially the ones that entailed him being forced into what was sure to be an uncomfortable dinner.

“Claudius is an ice elementalist.” Elizabeth offered with a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes as she silently pleaded with Kurt to go along with things.

So he did. Not because he was a good son, or had been trained in the fine art of being a houseguest, but because Kurt was hungry and he wanted answers from his mother.

Claudius was chatty. Kurt wasn’t sure if Others had nerves the way humans did, but he would have wagered Claudius covered up nerves with idle discussion. Within fifteen minutes, Kurt knew exactly where Claudius worked (at something called the Seasonal Afflictions Research Center), who he worked with (Annette, T’blo, and Urangit), that he was a Halfling that was considered young still at one hundred fifty years old, that he had been born in Italy with a love-matched Pureblood father and human mother, and also had several siblings through their union - all elementalists of some kind. Kurt made a lots of nods and ‘uh-huhs’ to indicate he was listening, even though his eyes were set on his mother the whole time Claudius rambled on.

Elizabeth’s eyes darted between Claudius and Kurt, glancing away whenever she noticed Kurt looking at her. Shame perhaps, Kurt thought. Or maybe it was her own set of nerves. At the very least she had to be feeling guilty for dragging Kurt here under innocent pretences.

The yipyapping of Claudius’ voice continued on through dinner, which was what Kurt identified as some kind of sea-lettuce and rice and served with a chilled tea. Kurt didn’t have a chance to get a word in edgewise, and he was glad that he didn’t have to try. Claudius droned on about the work he did, which Kurt truly couldn’t follow, and answered several of Kurt’s questions without them even having to be asked. He and Elizabeth had worked together on a project years ago, found they had several mutual interests, and began cohabiting six years prior. He made sure that Kurt knew how much Kurt coming back to her had meant to Elizabeth, and was glad they had the opportunity to reconnect in a way so many families with magic blood weren’t able to. Claudius even tried to joke that Kurt might try to usurp his position as the main man in her life - a joke that received no laughter and instead prompted Claudius to run into the next line of monologue after a moment of awkward silence.

“What was the point of telling me this… like this mother? Because with you, I know you had a point in there. It wasn’t just to tell me you moved on,” Kurt finally let out once Claudius had taken the dishes from the table and moved into the kitchen to deal with them.

“Actually… it was just to let you know that I had moved on. I didn’t tell you at first because the last time we had seen one another, I had been with your dad and I thought it would be upsetting, and then I didn’t tell you because it was clear you were struggling to adapt to life here… and then… well… I just decided there would be no good time to tell you…”

“So you showed me,” Kurt grunted, leaning back in his seat and folding his arms across his chest. “Rather, you shoved it in my face.”

“Kurt…”

“I know. You loved dad. Honestly, I don’t care about it. I’m almost thirty mother. You don’t need my permission to see anyone else.”

“Kurt…”

“In fact - good for you. You get another shot at romance after leaving us devastated. Too bad dad never had that chance.”

“Kurt…”

“Is the point to try and show me that I can also move on? Is that it? Because, believe me, I’m getting that message from everywhere and it’s fucking annoying.”

She stopped trying to interrupt his rage-induced diatribe, just glancing to him with pity etched in her features. Features that made her look more like a sister than a mother.  

“Just how old are you even mother? What else haven’t you told me?”

“I have a couple centuries on me…”

“Fuck.”

“... is there anything else you want to know?”

He shrugged, and then glanced at the floor for a split second before looking back up. “Yes, actually. Where did you grow up?”

“Germany.”

“Did you live with your mother?”

“Yes.”

“And Finavar?”

“No. It wasn’t a love match. He prefers male company.”

“Have you been with others before dad?”

She paused, and her lips rolled in between her teeth. “Kurt…”

“So yes.”

“Yes.”

“Christ mother…. I don’t even know what to say about this.”

“I know it must be difficult for you… but it’s not just meeting Claudius.”

“Oh goody.  More surprises.  Do I have siblings?”

“No.  You’re it Kurt.”  She took in a breath, trying to collect herself as Kurt glared her way.  “I’m going up top for awhile.”

“Why?”

“Healers take shifts up top.  It’s my turn to go.”

“Can I come too?”

“You know they wouldn’t allow it.”

“Why do they even need healers?  You’re all pretty much indestructible as far as I can figure.”

“For the Halfling camps mostly… they’re still being attacked even after all this time.”

Kurt clammed up, remembering what Blaine had told him about those places, and how those damned ear chains had come from the graves of Halfling children that had been attacked earlier by renegades.  

“I made up a little something from my time above! Trifle!” Claudius announced, holding dessert cups with the custardy treat on a tray in his hands as he reentered the room where an angry silence echoed against the walls.

Kurt stood up. “Thank you. I’m quite full though and ready to sleep.”

“Are you sure? Old Italian recipe….”

Kurt nodded, not bothering to look at his mother as he stepped out and let the door snap shut on its own as he left. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t that. Moreover, he didn’t know why it bothered him so much. His dad had died. His mom had every right to move on. Hell, she had lived longer than three human lifetimes, so why should he judge her relationships? Half of human relationships, if not more, ended in break-up, so why should he hold Other relationships to the same standard when he had been told it was normal for them to have many partners over the course of their lifetime?  

Despite what he had said, he didn’t feel like sleeping, so he walked around the town. It still bustled with energy, as Others kept their work going in shifts so there was always roughly the same number of individuals out and about at any given time of the generated day and night. He walked past the common baths, peeking at the casually naked creatures there, both men and women, and then turning his head away so sharply he was sure he pulled something in his neck from the motion. No matter how hard his mother tried, he couldn’t stand to look for more than a second at them. Inside, he was still the same shy, private boy he had always been. Hell, he wouldn’t have even had sex if he hadn’t had gotten drunk enough to lose some of those inhibitions.

Kurt couldn’t possibly imagine losing his inhibitions again, and having that happen with anyone else but Blaine. He wasn’t even sure if they had alcohol to help with that process down here.  

He kept walking, past the shops that were mostly manned by Halflings with no magic that choose to work in the services instead of in the armed military group that had headed the Tides. No one thought less of them for having no magic, they were still accepted, and for that, Kurt had to give this culture credit. Even when he was only teasingly suspected of having Other blood with the little points on his ears, he was considered an outcast in human society.

There was the council meeting hall, where a light on inside suggested a meeting was in session. Kurt hadn’t seen Finavar since that first encounter, and he had no desire to get to know him better, even now. He felt no more connected to that man than he did anyone else here. He had his grandfather’s eyes - that was it as far as he was concerned.

Finally Kurt got to where his feet led him to. The place he had been before his mother had led him to a supper that was more than just eating. He resumed laying beside the water, tapping his fingertips along the surface.

“What am I supposed to do...?” Kurt wondered aloud, for his ears only.  “... everyone says move on... but I don’t know how, Blaine… how do I do that?”

Colors flickered in the water, and Kurt immediately shot up into a sitting position and leaned over the edge, looking down. He could barely make it out, but he had done it. Somehow, he had brought up Blaine’s face, or at least his eyelids. Blaine was sleeping, and Kurt could identify those lashes anywhere - beautiful and long and brushed over the top of his cheeks.

“Blaine…”  He tapped his fingers along the water’s surface again, trying to figure out how to make the image more clear, and give him more of Blaine to see. It wasn’t like a camera or a computer though, at least what he remembered of those things. There was no adjustment settings and he didn’t know how he had even turned this picture on.

It was beautiful though, and so Kurt just let himself sit there, quietly marvelling in Blaine’s shut eyes until the water reclaimed the vision and the only indication that he had seen anything was the pounding of his heart and the tears in his eyes.

 

 


	38. Chapter 35: Crucify

_** ** _

_**“My body rises with the water. Instead of kicking my feet to stay abreast of it, I push all the air from my lungs and sink to the bottom. The water muffles my ears. I feel its movement over my face. I think about snorting the water into my lungs so it kills me faster, but I can't bring myself to do it. I blow bubbles from my mouth.** _

_**Relax. I close my eyes. My lungs burn.”  ― Veronica Roth, Divergent** _

 

“...Are you, are you  
Coming to the tree  
Where the dead man called out  
For his love to flee.  
Strange things did happen here  
No stranger would it be  
If we met at midnight  
In the hanging tree…”

There was a creak behind Blaine’s head as he croaked out the lyrics to the song pressing its way out of his brain from the inside-out. The vault may not have been sanitary, had no food or light, and was freezing cold, but it did have wonderful acoustics that were helping Blaine fill his time with the music his hoarse voice projected.  

The creak, however, was new, and it made Blaine shut his mouth and turn his head towards where he seemed to remember the door edge being. Another creak, and then muted voices, the most he’d heard besides his own sounds since he had been shut in there who knew how long ago.

“Hello?! HELLO! Can you hear me?! Please open the door! I’m trapped in here! I just want to get to the coast! Open the door! Please just let me out!”

He should have stayed silent.

When the vault door cracked open, Blaine’s eyes had to snap shut, and instead of rushing out like he had envisioned he would, he drew his head backwards. He didn’t know how long he’d been in there, but clearly long enough for the light to burn into his retinas and momentarily blind him. Blaine heard laughter long before his eyes could see, and the voices laughing were so familiar that he felt a pit form at the bottom of his belly.

“What did I tell you guys? It’s like karma dropped him right into our laps.”

That was Sebastian.

“When do they pick him up?”

Was that... Flint? One of the Warblers he last remembered standing by him with a gun in his hand when Blaine had been tied up?

“Tomorrow.”

Sebastian again.

“And we get him until then?”

Toby? Was that Toby? Toby that had been such a sweet kid when he joined the Warblers and whose involvement in the attack against the community had been a shock to Blaine and Trent.

Blaine’s eyes had begun to adjust, and he saw his path to freedom, the opened door of the vault, blocked by several pairs of legs. He cursed inwardly, knowing that if he had an opportunity to get out, it had now passed. Tipping his head up, it was like looking at an old yearbook photo full of people that had once been friends, but had since become obscure memories of days you thought were good, but were really just biding time until the days truly did become good. Old Warblers, the ones they had sent away, now surrounded him with nothing short of smug, malicious grins. It made that pit in his stomach harden further, sinking down into his abdomen and making his heart speed up.

“I just want to go… please guys…” he uttered, struggling to get to his feet. He had tried to stand before, falling against the wall as vertigo claimed him; The struggle to get up now was no different, but instead of the long fall that came with dizzy stumbling, he was smacked down to the ground with a sharp pop as one of them connected their fist to his jaw and he didn’t have the strength or warning to brace himself against it.

That was the only hit he had a moment to register, because as soon as he hit the ground, falling onto his stomach, more strikes were directed at his body. First they kicked their boots into his ribs and hips with a chorus of snaps and crunches that had him howling out in pain he didn’t know existed. Then, when his voice finally fractured, he sobbed out alongside the noises his body made as it broke. Blaine tried to curl up on himself, to wrap his arms around his stomach where the most sensitive and unprotected bits of him were, but they moved too quickly and hands were on him, pulling his arms and legs away from his core as punches were plowed into his face and torso such that he was sure they hadn’t missed a single millimeter of skin with their fists.  

His body had numbed from the initial kicking before most of those hits could be transmitted to his brain, and for small graces like that, he was grateful. They laughed as they hit him, spit on him, cheered one another on. They took turns punching him, kicking him, and when that wasn’t enough, someone began to slice open his back which made his voice come back in a scream. Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered that he had abstained from the vote that had landed them out here, to live instead of being put to death. He should have voted. He should have said they deserved to die. No one who was ever once a friend, no matter how badly things had gone between them, should be capable of this. No one should enjoy it at least. Not like they were.

His clothing was torn away, a show of their strength more than anything as they managed to rip apart the leather he wore, clothing Kurt had so carefully crafted for him so it had fit perfectly, and he didn’t have the strength to protest or cover himself when that was done, only yelping like a dying dog whenever the leather pulled away at blood on his body that had already begun to clot against it, reopening the wound and exposing it to the cold air. Left to lay on the floor, wheezing and wondering how long they were going to stretch out this torture, Blaine wished for death. Death would be a welcome release from the blend of pain and tingling numbness that had overtaken his body. He was so disoriented and swollen in his face that he might have well been alone in the dark room for all he could see.

“He like you remember him Seb?” one of the men asked of the ringleader.

“Fuck. Still has a nice ass, but hairy and bony everywhere else… and not the kind of bone I like.” They laughed at that and Blaine felt the tip of someone’s boot poke at a place not touched by anyone other than Kurt in years. It made him grit down on his molars, fume in anger, and yet he couldn’t do a damned thing about it. It struck him that they probably just hadn’t killed him yet so they could humiliate him like this.

He wasn’t surprised at that point that he was a joke to them. If one thing was clear, it was that they were getting their jollies from his misery. He should have been tougher with them years ago. He should have done more than speak up against them when they proposed attacking the community. He should have put Sebastian down when he had killed Charles. He shouldn’t have let it slide. They learned that dehumanizing and devaluing others was acceptable then, and now it was their norm. Angry regrets burst through his mind, and what really stung was that he was sure that if he had spoken out, the community would have voted to put them down back then. His younger self was an idiot.

“Well you’ve got him until morning, so you could give him a good fucking before they take him. See just how loose that halfling left him.”

Of course. If only to add more insult to his injury. He tried to protest, but discovered he could only gargle on his own spit and the blood from his gums. His teeth wobbled inside his mouth, and his tongue… he must have bit on it at some point because it, too, was swollen. He couldn’t even talk. He clenched the muscles in his ass, thankfully buried away from where most of the beating had taken place. If Sebastian was going to do something to him, then he didn’t want to make it easy.

“Fuck no. I don’t want to give him any sort of pleasure after what he did to us. Let him go to hell like this.”

Small mercies. He relaxed his backside, the effort of keeping it tight exhausting him. More laughter, and then footsteps leading away from him with the odd bit of noisy spit cast his way just in case they felt they hadn’t done enough.

The blackness came over him again after that, fully this time as he couldn’t even see the glow of light behind his eyelids. They had closed him in the vault again, and despite his best efforts to send the messages down from his brain to the rest of his body, he would not, could not move. Forced to lay naked in his own blood and filth, Blaine fluttered in and out of unconsciousness. He couldn’t sleep long enough to forget the pain, but couldn’t stay awake long enough to do more than remember his humiliation at their hands.  

He was surprised his body wasn’t giving out, wasn’t letting him die. His time spent in clinic at the community told him he probably had internal injuries with the force and intensity of the attack. The unsanitary conditions would also make it likely that he’d get infected through one of the open wounds he had.  

After several small comas, Blaine was awoken with another kick to the side, and opened the one eye that could still see a slivers length through. He couldn’t make out anything clearly though, except for a fuzzy image of someone set against the light from beyond the vault. Someone was there over him, someone who felt he wasn’t hurt enough. Another someone pulled him up, or maybe it was two someones. Blaine didn’t know, couldn’t tell, and he didn’t care. He just wanted this to be over.

“Put these ones on him,” someone chuckled, and he felt himself being dressed. Underwear being pulled up his legs and making him squawk uncontrollably every time the fabric grazed one of his fresh cuts or bruises, of which there were too many to count as the clothing travelled up his body.  

Pants followed, and though they yelled at him to stand up on his own, he crumpled down to the floor each time he tried to comply, out of pride more than obedience. His bones felt out of place. Hell, everything in him felt out of place. They had to hold him up in their arms and dress him like a doll in whatever it was they were putting on him. The way they giggled though… he was sure it wasn’t exactly complimentary. It wouldn’t be one of Kurt’s well thought out creations, that was both functional, comfortable, and well fitted.

Sebastian’s voice spoke then, loud and right in front of him, so close he could feel his breath on him, smell the food that he had eaten that morning, and, damn it, it made his stomach growl. “Thanks for the food rations and maps.”

So they had his backpack.

“You can keep the ears though.”

He felt the chain being pulled over his head, left to dangle around his shoulders and chest where it was roughly tucked in under whatever kind of shirt they had on him. The dried skin from the Halfling ears grinding against his chest like sandpaper. More chuckles after that, and the sound of skin slapping skin that was probably them giving one another high fives. Assholes.

“Oh… and to show you that I’m not a complete jerk… Here.” Something was pushed into the pocket of the pants he had been dressed in, making him see spots as it rubbed against some sore point that was clearly quite sensitive to the touch on his hip. “You always did have a thing for these stupid old phones and music players.”

They laughed some more, and then Sebastian sent them out, letting him collapse back to the floor without anyone to hold him up. If only he could get up, he could do something… try to surprise Sebastian… get the upper hand. He would do to Sebastian what they had all done to him. He would make sure it was fatal though.  

Reality slapped him though. Who the hell was Blaine kidding, thinking he had any ability to change the balance of power? He could barely wiggle his tongue.  

“You asked who I had to kill to rule out here…” Sebastian spoke as Blaine listened to him walk around in the echoing vault, the heels of his boots clicking with each step. “... no one actually. But I did make deals I never would have dreamed about before we were forced out here.”

If his skull and body hadn’t been screaming at him, Blaine might have rolled his eyes. Sebastian always had a flair for the cartoon style dramatics, and that clearly hadn’t changed. Here he was, circling around Blaine and about to tell him how he rose to power like the absurd ego-tripping villain he was. As if Blaine actually cared at this point. As if it made any difference at all.

“After Hunter died, I decided we needed to change how we were living. We found this old town, made it our own. It was really a stroke of luck that the Others that came by not long after we moved in were more interested in peace than war though. It was agreed that we’d give them rebels and those that sought to hurt them, and in exchange they’d let us live freely. It’s been a wonderful relationship. It used to be just us Warblers, but now we have hundreds of humans here, and happy to work for us in exchange for the safety this place offers.”

If Sebastian was waiting for Blaine’s input on the conversation, he was going to have to wait until Blaine could actually move his jaw enough to speak, and Blaine certainly wished he could if only to tell Sebastian what a bastard he was.

“... Anyhow. They come by each month to see if we have any rebels or information of interest. I thought I’d let them deal with you since you seem to have an affinity for the pointy eared freaks It’s a shame though, you know. There was a time I really, truly did care about you Blaine… or at least your cock and ass, but all I see when I look at you now is filth. Traitorous, halfling-humping, filth.”

Fog dripped between Blaine’s ears, and slowly he came to understand what Sebastian was getting at. Not that understanding mattered though. No matter what they intended to do with him, he was still too subdued to do anything more than accept it. Death from traitorous Warblers or death from Others… really, it was all the same at this point. Blaine just wanted it to be over. He wanted to shut his eyes, think of Kurt, and let someone make the final blow.

Instead, he heard that same, shrill language from months ago, and more footsteps joining Sebastian’s. Two or more of those things were speaking to one another, and then finally one of them spoke to Sebastian in proper English.

“Been a while since you gave us anyone.”

“This one wandered in and put up a fight. Took a few of my men to bring him down. Said he was going to the coast to storm one of your encampments. Didn’t make a lot of sense,” Sebastian replied, lacing his words with lies that flowed from his mouth so easily.

“Looks like a loony the way he’s dressed.”

“Acted like one, too.”

“Alright then. We’ll take him. Anything else we should know?”

“Yeah. One of my men said they saw something questionable strung around his neck. Might want to take a look. Make sure it’s nothing that could hurt you.”

“Thanks for the heads up. See you next month, Sebastian.”

Blaine felt himself being lifted up, coughing up blood and mucus from within his mouth when his stomach was pressed down against his carrier’s shoulder. Then he felt the air run over him as he was toted out of the room, away from the stench of death within it. It was a short lived ride though, because as soon as he was out of the building, he was tossed into something else, though much softer than the ground he nearly expected to feel under him, hay perhaps, and listened as a horse was smacked and whatever apparatus he was in began to move, taking him away from Sebastian, the Warblers, and whatever chance he had of finding Kurt.

He passed out again, not long after that, waking each time the cart he assumed he was in hit a bump in the road and then going back to blackness immediately afterwards. Any sleep he managed to get was as dark as the vault had been. No dreams. No peace. The bumping made him ache, even as he slept, and that was all he felt after a while. Constant pain. Conscious or not, he was aware of how hurt he was.

Like his time in the vault, he wasn’t sure how much time passed, and when he did achieve consciousness for more than a minute at a time, it struck him that maybe he could plead with these Others to let him see Kurt. He tried talking again, only getting that same, damned gurgling noise from before as his mouth was too swollen to move, and then let out a sob. He had come so far… so far and he couldn’t even use his voice to beg them to listen to him.

His eyes didn’t improve over time either. In fact, the small bit he could see just seemed to get more distorted everytime he tried to slit open his one eye, and doing that sent spikes of pain into his skull each time he tried. So Blaine remained mute and immobile, wondering if he’d die sooner from his injuries or from their magic.  

When they did stop the cart, he was asleep, but came to when he was pulled from his place and thrown to the ground. It was a sharp reminder that his pain could be worse as it awoke every nerve in his body and made them all flame up together. He wanted to scream, but his voice wouldn’t let him.

They spoke over him, in that too-fast, mish-mashed language of theirs. Someone grabbed him by the hair, forcing tears out of his swollen eyes, and lifted him slightly. More speaking, more pulling on his hair. Someone yelled and then Blaine felt the chain on his neck being pulled off him until it broke behind his neck and left him dangling under the hold of whomever was holding his scalp.

Then they yelled a lot. Their language was bad enough when it was spoken in conversational tones, but it was grating when they were screaming at one another, or at him - he couldn’t tell. There were more footsteps as more of them came to join in the fray. With the discovery of his necklace of Halfling ears, he was surprised they didn’t just kill him on the spot. What was the hold up?

Someone tried after that. He couldn’t know for sure, but he made the assumption based on the way the sounds fell around him. Someone approached him, yelled right at him, and then put their hands on him. Just as suddenly as that happened though, that Other’s hands were off him, as well as the grip that was on his hair, making him land on the ground in a heap of mangled bone and skin.

He was left alone for a minute after that as their screams became hushed whispers, their voices lifting at the end of their statements like questions. Conversations began and then Blaine heard the approach of another one of them, felt its breath on his face as it put its face near him.

“You speak human English?”

Blaine tried to respond, he really did. He wanted them to know the truth. He wanted them to know why he had sought them out, but again all he got was the sound of his spit moving against his tongue and a cough summoned up by the blood and saliva he had been swallowing.

“What magic do you possess, human?” the same voice asked of him, angry and impatient. Blaine tried again to make a noise, to tell them he had no magic, but ended up just gargling that thick mixture at the back of his throat. This time when his eyes pushed out tears, it was because of frustration, not pain.

Hands were on him again, and again they were off him just as fast. It was like they were being pulled away and the way they rattled off words in their language with sharp tones, it was like they were reflecting the same irritation he felt inside. They wanted to hurt him, but they were being stopped.

There was shuffling, a lot more of the conversation, and the feeling of more hands coming close to him and being stripped away. The pain was in a high point again, as it seemed to cycle between numbing spasms and complete agony, and Blaine felt himself blacking out again when he heard the voice of a woman.

“Why did you call me for a human rebel?”

They responded to her in their language, and she replied in her accented English, an accent he couldn’t place, at least not with his head thrumming like it was. Once, at his parents yacht club, he had been able to correctly guess places of origins of some of the guests by listening to their accents. His family and their friends thought it was most amusing. Blaine had just been glad to get their approval.

“I don’t heal humans. If you wanted him to speak, then you shouldn’t have hurt his mouth.”

Again they responded in their tongue, and he could hear the woman let out a long sigh above him. Hands were placed on him again, and he winced at the touch. Those fingers were too long, too thin. They weren’t Kurt’s. Instead of making like this Other was going to hurt him though, the hands stayed there, stayed there and made his body cold where she had them. Like ice pressed against his wounds - so cold it burned.  

“What… what’s wrong with this human?”

The hands were taken away, and he sniffed a breath through his nose in relief. The talking began again, and that woman called for someone to fetch her someone named Kalki. That name made the hairs on his body stand up on end. He didn’t know why, but he just felt like something terrible was coming. He had to stay tense though, for whatever was coming, because it took a while to coordinate bringing that Other they had called for in, forcing Blaine to fight off the sleep that wanted to take him.

“Was this human with the Quarterling when you found him?” the woman with cold hands asked after even more footsteps had joined them.

Silence for a moment, and then Blaine felt his chin being lifted, an act that made his neck feel like it was going to burn apart and separate his head from his body. He could see a blur before him, someone looking at him, examining him.

“This was the one that glowed the brightest when Vila did her psychometry… the one your Quarterling had the most attachment to of those we captured…”

Despite it making him ache even more, Blaine’s whole body tensed. That voice. That was the voice of the Halfling that sliced through his friends, Pudding… the one that tortured them. It was her. He tried to squirm away, pull away from her touch, puffing hard breaths out of his nostrils as he strained.

“Would you like me to kill him?”

He held his breath then. This was it. They had been waiting for her, so that she could redeem herself for losing Kurt by killing Blaine. That was why he hadn’t been killed yet.

“You can try,” the first woman noted, and as soon as she gave the permission, Blaine could hear the slide of a blade being pulled from its sheath, metal rattling against metal, and the slice of the air above his head. He focused on the thought of Kurt. He tried to anyhow. Despite his wishes, he was still afraid of permanently seeing nothing.

The slice ended with the sound of a screech though, and it wasn’t his own. The Halfling swore in English, and then spat out something in the language of the Others that Blaine betted was more cursing. Again, just like before, she had been stopped by something. He wasn’t dead - at least not yet. The first woman chuckled and Blaine heard her step back in front of him, put a cold hand under his chin and lift it up, causing that same ripple of anguish to shoot up his neck.

“Kurt’s so much stronger than I imagined…”

Kurt. KURT. Blaine involuntarily choked a squeak out of his mouth at the name and it made the woman before him chuckle once again. She knew Kurt. She could take him to him. She could send him a message. She could help him. He had to talk to her. He had to get his voice back.  

“Fetch me a copper piece. I must send a message to the council. In the meantime, lock him in one of the cells. He’s no harm to us in his state.”

Hands were tucked under his armpits, and he was carefully dragged away to the cell they mentioned. It was outside, or at least he assumed it was since he felt the dirt under him, wet from melted snow. There, Blaine chose to let sleep take him, not fighting it anymore. He felt more at peace now that he knew there was someone there that knew Kurt. Someone who knew his name. His heart felt like it was flying above his body, and had been since that woman had spoken the name he hadn’t heard in so long. She was someone that had enough power to send him to a cell instead of having him killed. He might not have understood everything that was said or done, but he felt better than he did in that vault, and even when he heard a key lock the cage he had been put into, he knew, that at the very least, he was closer to his goal than he thought he had been when he had first come to wherever it was he had been taken.

It didn’t stop the pain though. As before, Blaine was in and out of sleep each time the pain cycled through him in waves. The way he felt sweat on his brow, Blaine knew he had a fever, which was just more icing on the cake of torment he was suffering through. Occasionally, he registered footsteps nearby, and whispers in their tongue. As long as he wasn’t being hurt even more, he was okay with it. Let them look at him. Let them talk about him. Someone here knew Kurt. Blaine would find a way to use his voice, and he would get them to take him to Kurt. He didn’t quite know how he would convince them of it, or if he even could, but he was so close he could taste it, more than the iron of his blood on his tongue or the bile that kept rising from his stomach.  

He tasted success.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to warn everyone that my holidays are over now and please don’t be upset if you don’t see the every couple days kind of updates I was able to offer during holidays. It’s not that I don’t want to write, it’s just that I have no time and energy when I get home each day. My fellow teachers should be able to understand my pain. ;)


	39. Chapter 36: Promises

_** ** _

_**“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at water.” - Laurence J. Peter** _

Kurt rolled his shoulders back, one at a time, then flexed his head from side to side. He hadn’t had a good sleep the night before, and spending all morning reading the books Mab laid out in front of him had only made the cricks and strains in his neck and back worse. Now he was shooting off arrows, albeit lazily and out of habit, into the distance. He had asked the usual crowd to give him privacy today, which they did kindly enough, and only Midhir was there, sitting on the grass a few feet away and quietly watching Kurt’s attempts to make himself feel better.

“You should go to the common baths, they’re infused with-”

“No. Nope.” Kurt quickly shook his head, grimacing as that inflamed the pain in his neck. “Not going to happen.”

“But they have relaxant properties….”

“Ugh… they also have everyone else naked around me.” He shot off an arrow, with no specific target, and watched it fly out across the field before losing momentum and falling into the grasses.

“I don’t understand why that’s a problem. It’s not sexual…”

Kurt wrinkled up his nose, lowering his bow to his side to crack the knuckles in his fingers with a rapid crunk-crunk-crunk noise. “I’m just not comfortable with it.”

Midhir, to his credit, didn’t push the matter any further, and when he suggested they go for tea earlier than normal, Kurt was agreeable in turn. They made haste to collect his arrows and go to the shop where Kurt took up the server’s suggestion of a tea that was supposed to relax tense muscles along with a side of biscuits.

“You haven’t been sleeping well lately,” Midhir noted after taking a sip of his own tea.  

“Or at all,” Kurt confirmed, sipping his own tea with a soft sigh and then leaning back in his seat and using the back rim of the chair to rub into his shoulder blades.

“Why not?”

“There’s just… things on my mind.”

“It’s the pool isn’t it?”  

Kurt let his eyes form slivers as he quietly regarded Midhir for a moment, who once again had revealed that he knew more than Kurt suspected. Either he had been following Kurt again or his intuition was just that good.

“I think I figured out how to use it, but not very well… the first time all I saw were his eyelids, and since then all I’ve been able to see is black. It’s even more frustrating than not being able to see anything at all.”

“Maybe he’s dead,” Midhir said stoically, sipping his tea as if he had asked Kurt to pass the honey instead of suggesting the worst.

“What? Why the hell-”

“Closed eyes and then black? Maybe he’s buried. Just an idea.”

It sent a shiver down Kurt’s spine, followed by a hard thump of his heart against his ribs. Suddenly the tea wasn’t sitting right in his stomach, and the biscuits in front of him made him feel queasy. “No… he’s not dead.”

Midhir shrugged, sipped his tea, and looked over Kurt. “Just a thought.”

“I just don’t know how to use it properly,” Kurt insisted, more to convince himself and get over the sudden sense of dread that was filling him up everywhere, making his chest tingle and his stomach roll. “... and I’m losing sleep over it.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go to it tonight then. Maybe you should just take a soothing bath, drink a relaxing tea, and go to bed early. Try to catch up. Maybe part of the problem is that you aren’t completely with it given how tired out you are.”

Kurt had been more tired than he was presently. There were times in the community when everyone had to pitch in for some project, and Kurt had always taken double shifts since he had no family to get back home to. Sometimes he went on long hunts that left him without sleep for two days at a time. His muscles would ache then too, but he could still shoot down a buck without issue. Really, he couldn’t complain about how he felt right now. He had just gotten so used to a soft, comfortable bed, and a lax schedule that he had spoiled his body.

However, magic did seem a little bit more sensitive in its usage than archery was. Perhaps Midhir had a point, and Kurt should take a step back before trying to take a step forward.  

“Yeah… makes sense. I think I’ll do that.”

“Very good. Your mother is up top I hear.”

The change of subject was welcome, though as Kurt talked with Midhir about his mother’s journey to the world above, he couldn’t shake his worry over Blaine. What if Blaine really was dead and what if he had done something to himself because Kurt had left? What if this sacrifice that Kurt had made had been all in vain because, as much as he had hoped, he hadn’t been able to protect Blaine in the end?

He had to force himself to drink back the rest of his tea as those thoughts floated into his mind without invitation, trying to avoid Midhir’s concern over him, and took the biscuits home with him instead of eating them at the shop, citing that it was the plan for them all along. Kurt had to force himself to walk straight home then, and not detour to the pool no matter how much his heart seemed to beat in its direction. He had to pull up his hand every time someone waved at him, waving back despite the fact that he wanted to ignore them and focus on Blaine. It had been months since he had left the community, and yet the thoughts of his curly haired, caramel eyed husband plagued him just as much as they had when he had first come here. Kurt wasn’t sure if he’d ever feel better.

As Kurt opened the door, ready to shake off the facade of being alright and collapse into bed, he was instead greeted by Finavar, standing tall and looking down upon him with those water colored eyes set against his black hair and black clothing. It gave Kurt a bit of a start, since it was only the second time he had seen the man, and now he was in the place Kurt considered his refuge.

“We must speak.”

“Fuck…” Kurt gave his head a shake and put back up his internal walls, walking past Finavar and into his room to set the bag of biscuits down on the table by his bed. “You know, in human culture, people respect privacy.”

“This is not a human settlement,” Finavar huffed, remaining in place by the door but not moving as his eyes followed Kurt. “I have news for you.”

Kurt felt his heart twinge. Immediately, his mind went to the worst place, and that was thinking that something happened to Elizabeth. Maybe she had been attacked, and now was dying, or worse, dead. He spun on his heels and looked directly at the man who was supposed to be his grandfather, waiting for him to tell him the bad news, waiting to have to deal with even more loss in his life.

“Elizabeth believes she had found your… human mate.”

That was the last thing Kurt expected, and he gave away his surprise as he sucked in a sharp breath and took a few steps closer to Finavar. “How? When?”

“He was brought in from a human settlement near the coast where the local humans have made a deal with our kind to turn in threatening humans to us…”

That didn’t make any sense. Not one word of it. Kurt’s brain tried to wrap around so many things. A human settlement near the coast. Humans making deals with Others. Blaine being considered a threat. None of those seemed to fit into what Kurt knew.

“When they tried to execute him, they couldn’t. He had been beaten so Elizabeth was called to heal him to find out why they couldn’t lay hands on him and her magic didn’t penetrate him.”

Kurt’s mind began to spin, and he set a hand against the wall to help brace him as he looked to the ground to focus his thoughts. For a split second he thought it might be a ruse, some kind of pure-blood prank, but then he again had to remind himself that it was more likely that Finavar was telling him the truth, no matter how little sense it made. His stomach felt like it was being stomped on with each word, particularly the mentions of attempts to execute Blaine and that Blaine was beaten.  

“He was identified by Kalki, the Halfling general that was with the party that found you initially inland.”

Kurt took a deep breath, and looked up, eye-to-eye with Finavar. “Is he okay?”

“That is for you to decide.”

Kurt’s stomach sank deep within him. They were going to use Blaine against him… again. He thought he had been accepted here but clearly that was not the case, at least not when it came to the council. Without having to think on it, he already knew what they wanted, and if he wasn’t already feeling like his core was going cold, the deal he was about to make would have ensured he would have.

“You want me to sire children…”

Finavar nodded, smirking a little at Kurt’s ability to clue into the situation.  

“You know I can’t say no… but, but… he has to be alright - and he has to be with me.”

Kurt’s ears pounded as he watched, waited for Finavar to either deny him or accept his offer.  He was making a big choice in an emotional state, and he knew it, but there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to ensure Blaine’s safety, especially after spending several nights in a row fretting over what he saw, or didn’t see for that matter, in the viewing pool. He didn’t even think about whether Blaine might be better off up top and without him as the need to see with his own eyes that Blaine was cared for overrode every other iota of reason in him. It seemed to take forever for Finavar to respond, but in reality it only took him a moment.

“Very well.”

“What do I need to do?”

Finavar gestured for Kurt to follow him out the door and back down to the town, something which Kurt did earnestly. He felt like he was racing, or chasing something, and that he couldn’t quite make it. Suddenly everything seemed more intense than it really was, and his sense of urgency had gone well past being high to soaring right out and above him.

“You will give a sample of your make to the Ilu who will see it delivered into ready wombs.”

Well at least he didn’t need to do it himself. With a breath of relief he nodded quickly and kept on Finavar’s heels despite the way his stomach had frozen so it was rock hard now and seemed to carry with it extra weight upon each step.

“We will have your human mate brought to the Ilu hall in town. As healing magic does not seem to work on him, Elizabeth has gotten local human healers to help work on him - from the Halfling encampment. Parents of Halfling children apparently. The Ilu here have done enough experiments and work on human bodies to be the best option to work on him without using magic.”

Experiments, work… Finavar made it sound like the poking and picking they did upon human bodies was a replacement for proper medical care. It also was clear to Kurt then that Finavar had anticipated what Kurt’s request would be, and made plans in advance. If he hadn’t been so worried, Kurt would have been mad at being outthought and outplayed, but Blaine was apparently hurt and within his reach, so Kurt kept his mouth shut as he listened to Finavar speak.

“Elizabeth believes your magic is the reason she cannot heal him and the reason that they were unable to execute him initially…”

Kurt furrowed his brow. “I don’t even know how to use my magic.”

“... I said as much. Mab believes you use it unintentionally and -”

“You spoke to Mab?”

“Of course. I am the representative of all support magic after all, and she falls as a trainer under that.”

The soreness in Kurt’s body became worse with each word out of Finavar. Blaine had been beaten. The Others had tried to kill him. Kurt’s magic stopped them but also stopped Blaine from being helped by his mother. Mab had been reporting to Finavar on his progress (or lack thereof). He had been tricked into fathering a child….

Blaine was hurt.

Finavar stopped in front of the Ilu center, a large dark building that reflected their similarly dark powers. Together they went inside, greeted by several Ilu that Kurt could scarcely tell apart. They were all so pale, bald, white-eyed, and lanky. They seemed to have a dress code of black robes that covered up the majority of their bodies, only exposing their long fingers that were so thin-skinned, they showed the veins below.  

“He will give a sample.”

The group of Ilu nodded vigorously in unison, and one held out a ceramic cup to Kurt, who hesitantly took it into his hands and turned it around in them. “... just… into this?”

“Yes. If you feel unable to impregnate a female on your own, then this is how it must be done,” one of them stated, prompting them all to nod again.

“You will be supervised to ensure it is your sample that is given -”

“What?!”

“... and that you’re not trying to trick us. When it is done, I will have him transported,” Finavar stated, making it plain to Kurt that he didn’t trust him one bit.

Kurt was getting used to the feeling of bile rising in his throat, burning it with its acidity, and once again it didn’t fail to come up with Finavar’s declaration. He knew where he ranked in terms of power though, especially when it came to having the power to bring Blaine to him, and he needed to get Blaine there as fast as he could. Begrudgingly then, Kurt looked towards the Ilu and asked, “where can I… do it?”

They gestured for him to follow them, and so he did, being taken to a side room that had clearly been used for some of their experiments as an examination table sat in the center of it and the cupboards were filled with different parts of anatomy - probably from humans - floating in jars with liquid. How he was supposed to feel aroused enough to do what he needed to do given the circumstances and setting was beyond him in that instant, but it didn’t stop him from shucking down his pants low enough to expose himself before them. He avoided their eyes though. This crossed out of his comfort zone and into some other territory that he was definitely not alright with. Still, to get Blaine to him, he had to do what they deemed necessary.

“Do you need… oh, what do the humans call it… a prepper? Fluffer?” one of his escorts suggested, drawing more red into his cheeks as he realized they were looking at his flaccid member. He turned slightly into the wall, unsuccessfully trying to hide himself as his skin burned with the attention being given to him.

“No! No… I’ll… just… I’ll be fine.” He couldn’t tell them this would be easier to do without them there because it was all part of the deal. He had to do this.

So, taking in a deep breath and closing his eyes, he thought back. Thought of how he would look over Blaine’s sleeping form beside him in their bed with the light from the cracks between the wood casting rays of gold over Blaine’s body. He thought of how he had chased Blaine down in the winter once after being the victim of one of Blaine’s snowballs and tackled him into the snow below him, Blaine laughing the whole time. Then there was that time Kurt was so tired from staying up to help with the twins when both Sam and Mercedes had to work and Blaine dragged him off to bed while rocking one of the babies in each of his arms before Kurt’s sleepy eyes. It didn’t make him forget he wasn’t alone in the room, but it did help him ensure he was hard enough to wrap his hand around, hard enough to stroke, all the while thinking back to more sweet memories as he tugged on his dick furiously, not wanting this to take longer than it needed to.

Blaine below him, looking up at him with a sweat rimmed brow.  
Blaine between his legs so all Kurt could see were his curls bouncing up and down.  
Blaine wrapping his arms around him from behind, holding him close as he buried himself within Kurt.

“Gg…. ngh!”

In truth, Kurt hadn’t done more than idly touch himself on a few occasions since he had come to this place. It felt like cheating to give himself pleasure without Blaine there to share in it, and so he was sufficiently pent up to get the job over with quickly enough.

One of his escorts stole the cup from where he had it clenched in white knuckled fingers, and he again looked away shamefully as he drew up his pants. It was done. If it worked to their advantage, he’d be a father soon…

But he’d also have Blaine.

Once he felt his face had cooled off enough and ensured he was all done up again, Kurt returned to the main hall where Finavar nodded his way, smug smirk over his angular face. “Very good. I will send the message.”

Kurt was pretty sure his dad’s father, the one he had always called grandpa, would never have been so happy that he had jerked off into a cup.  

“How long?”

“It shouldn’t take long at all. Several Ilu are already up top ready to bring him below on my word.”

A shiver spiked through Kurt as he gulped and nodded to the back of the man already walking away and out of the building. Soon. He’d be with Blaine again soon.

Of course soon didn’t mean immediate, and Kurt paced the floor, looking up hopefully whenever one of the Ilu residents bustled by. There was so much he wanted to ask Blaine. So many questions that his joining Kurt had brought up, especially given what Finavar had said. Had Kurt really placed a spell on Blaine somehow? If Kurt could reverse it somehow, would a healer be able to help Blaine? He wanted to go and ask Mab how he could do it, but given how she had been talking behind his back to Finavar and how little he had actually learned from her in the past few weeks, Kurt quickly threw that idea away. No. If he was going to figure out how to help Blaine, he’d have to do it on his own.

The biggest necessity would be overseeing the Ilu. Kurt trusted them less than he did most of the Others down below after all this time. He knew what they did, how they would experiment on humans up top to learn more about them, their techniques of torture they called research. Hell, Kurt was pretty sure Ilu were the source of vampire mythology with their pale skin, dark attire, and interest in death -  and they sure as hell weren’t sparkly like in the young adult novels that Trent had said all the young girls were voracious for at the community library. Ilu practiced magic that dealt with mortality and nightmares, and as such, he needed to ensure they didn’t use any while they were taking care of Blaine.

Though apparently he might have inadvertently protected Blaine from magic without realizing it anyhow.

When a light flashed in the center of the hall, Kurt wasn’t expecting it and so he jumped back a step and braced his hand on the wall beside him. No one else seemed concerned about it though, even as it grew and formed an oval that showed darkness within. It struck him that this was it, and, with a deep breath, he stepped towards the opening just as Ilu came out of it, four in total, each holding the corner of a wooden stretcher in their hands which a man was bound to with cloth.

It took him a moment, maybe longer, to realize that man was Blaine.

He was smaller than Kurt remembered, thinner. His beard had taken over his face and that face was covered in dark blue and purple bruises that had swollen outwards, making his eyes sink into his face. The binding wrapping him to the board he was being carried on covered his legs and arms, but Kurt could tell that they were somehow out of place.

He knew Blaine was hurt, but he didn’t anticipate how badly. His heart sunk down from where it had jumped up in joy briefly to know it was Blaine before him. “Blaine…”

His husband didn’t respond though, and the Ilu continued to walk towards one of their side rooms with all their questionable equipment, Kurt hot on their heels.

“He is sedated,” one of them said stiffly as they continued to hold Blaine up while they were preparing to transfer him from the stretcher to the table they had prepared.

“I’m not leaving him,” Kurt noted sternly, receiving no response, positive or negative, from the Ilu who went about cutting the bindings off of Blaine to reveal just how mauled his body was. There was scarcely a spot that wasn’t bruised, and his arms and legs had all been put into casts. When he was lifted from the stretcher to the table, Kurt sucked in a breath, seeing gashes over Blaine’s back, and held it, only to breath in even more air when he saw the stitched incision over Blaine’s abdomen.

The table was soft, and Kurt was pretty sure it was cushioned by water. In addition they had lifted the edges of the table up so they could pour water, likely infused with the same antiseptic properties as the common baths, around Blaine to no more than an inch high.  

“The human doctors showed us their medicines. We have replicated them to the best of our ability.  They also went inside him to stop some bleeding from within.” an Ilu said to Kurt, who looked up from where he had been staring at Blaine’s ribs. Some of them had been wrapped up, but the ones he could see were pressed tightly against his skin, telling Kurt that he hadn’t just been beaten, but had been starving too. Each one had a hollow space before the next one, like a skeleton.  

“Is he going to be alright?”

“We have made a deal. We intend to keep it.”  

Kurt nodded and watched them carefully as they each attended to a separate part of Blaine. One of them hooked up something that resembled an IV, a thought confirmed when they noted, “a human doctor gave us this. It has what you call antibiotics.”

“He… has an infection?”

The Ilu nodded to him and resumed its work, eyeing up the needle attached to the antibiotic bag curiously before clarifying with one of the others on how it was to be inserted and hanging the bag up on a post nearby.

Kurt really wished right then that he had studied medicine when they had asked him, and he had been asked more than once. He never knew he might need it. He never thought that it could help someone he loved so much.

He always thought someone else would know enough to handle it. Even in the wintertime at the community, when Blaine inevitably caught whatever cold or flu was going around, Kurt always called Mike or Carole in to look him over just to tell Kurt that all Blaine needed was time, water, and care - three things that Kurt ensured Blaine had during those periods. Blaine was so apologetic too, telling Kurt sorry whenever he vomited into a bowl Kurt would hold out for him, telling Kurt he didn’t need to stay and watch him when Blaine had a fever, or weakly telling Kurt he’d be fine despite the fact that he’d be coughing out his own lungs. Kurt always took care of Blaine then, and had always been glad to do so, but this… this went beyond simple time, water, and care.  

Blaine breaths were choppy, stuttered as they came out from between his cracked and split lips. His nose was also bandaged, and Kurt assumed it had been broken as well given how red and puffy it was. He just wanted to reach out and touch Blaine’s cheek, to tell him that he’d be alright, to make that connection that would let Kurt know the man in front of him was real because it all seemed too surreal still, but Blaine looked damaged everywhere and Kurt didn’t even know where he could touch Blaine that might not hurt him.

“What kind of medicine did the doctors send with you?”

One Ilu glanced up from where it was swabbing Blaine’s arm and nodded towards a bag Kurt hadn’t noticed being brought in. He pulled himself away from Blaine’s side and looked through the bag, seeing within it smaller bags filled with different pills, and with each bag a note.

Amoxicillin - To be taken with water at the same time every day once the patient is conscious and able to swallow the pill on his own. Can be crushed and put into liquids if patient does not resume normal eating habits within time frame given.

Oxycotin - For pain. Do not crush…

Lorazepam - For sedation…

There were just so many bags of different pills, all colors and sizes. Kurt held his breath as he looked them over, feeling like the room was spinning suddenly under him, and grabbed the corner of the counter to brace himself. When he looked back over at Blaine, one of the Ilu had some metal tongs coming out of his mouth and in them, a tooth… Blaine’s tooth.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“Several of his teeth are no longer connected fully to his gums. We were advised to remove them so they do not cause further issue and potential infection.”

“Can’t… can’t you fix them?”

It looked towards him then, or at least he assumed it was looking at him with those blank eyes, and Kurt swore it was judging him. “We are unable to use magic on him or this would be a much simpler matter.”

“I don’t know how… I don’t know how to undo it…” Kurt insisted, keeping his fingers coiled around the counter’s edge tightly. “I would if I could. I don’t know how… I don’t…”

“Calm yourself Quarterling. We are already having to tend to him the best we can, we do not need to spend our time on you too.”

He knew it was right, and so he took in a breath and let it out, and then coached himself to take another, and another after that, until he was breathing properly again and the floor felt stable enough to walk on again. He had to keep it together. He needed to be there for Blaine in case… no… when Blaine woke up.

“Beside the medicine… the clothing he wore. Should we destroy it?”

Kurt looked over at a second bag, moving to open it and then pausing as he saw the contents. Pink sweatpants with the word Princess emblazoned on the butt in fancy black lettering, a crop-top that had more sequins than fabric, a rainbow tutu. All of it encrusted with red from where Blaine’s blood had soaked into it. Either Blaine had lost his mind, he had no other clothing alternatives, or someone had sought to humiliate him. Kurt was about to turn away from the bag and tell the Ilu that it could be destroyed when he saw a glint of metal peaking out from one of the pockets of the pants and reached in to pull out a phone, also with scabs of dried blood coating it.  

Kurt knew that phone, knew what was on it. The scratch going down the side and the scuff mark on the button gave it away. This was the one he listened to the most. Blaine had been carrying this for him and now Kurt had it in his hands, holding it to his heart and having to bite down on his lower lip to stop himself from tearing up.  

So he waited, watching as they washed each wound with care he didn’t expect out of them, overseeing them work together to make sure they were following the directions they had been given correctly, swabbing Blaine over several times to ensure he was clean, and then, working together to roll Blaine on his side so they could tend to the gashes on his back.

Gashes that wrote out two words.

BACK STABBER

His hand lifted to his mouth to hold back the vomit that crept up in him when he saw that, and the sadness and worry that had been overflowing in him until that point began to bubble as anger set in. Blaine had been hurt by someone that knew him, someone that knew him and was cruel enough to do something that horrible to him.  

Kurt could never say that he felt murderous before, not even when he was shot down and the community was attacked, but he felt it then. He felt that he could be capable of killing someone, so long as it was getting the someone that did that to Blaine.

“Did… did they say who did that to him?” Kurt choked out over the acid he was forcing back into his belly.

“No. It was not of concern.”

“Why the hell wouldn’t it be?” Kurt said with a shake of his head.

“What does it say?”

He sometimes forgot the innate language they shared, and while some knew how to speak different human languages, the Purebloods, like the Ilu, didn’t often know how to read human languages. “Back stabber.”

“Hmm.”

Their tone was disinterested, passive, and it made Kurt even more irritated. They were supposed to care. He was one of them and Blaine was his, and so Blaine had to be one of them too by proxy. If they said they cared about Kurt, then they should care about Blaine too. It made sense in Kurt’s mind.

After his back had been cleaned and wrapped in new bandages, they laid Blaine back down and several of them left the room, leaving only two there with Kurt, one of which explained, “now we tend to him in regular intervals and monitor his progress. If you can pull your spell off him, we would also be able to call in a healer.”

“I want to… I want to…”

“But you do not know how to use that magic which makes you special. Yes. That has been revealed.”

Kurt glanced down at his feet, shamed once again in their presence. It was okay to be a Halfling and not be born with magic, but it was another thing entirely to have magic and not know how to use it. Especially now. Before he was just fooling around, trying to use up his time by learning what he might be capable of, but now he really needed to know how to use magic and he didn’t have the foggiest idea of how. He should have paid more attention, or applied himself more. He was capable of more and he knew it.

He looked up at Blaine’s broken body again, clutching the phone tightly in both hands and keeping it pressed against his heart.

“You should go home and rest. He is quite sedated and will likely not be responsive until much later.”

“I’m not leaving him.”

“It is unnecessary to stay.”

Kurt shook his head. “No. I’m not leaving him. Not again. Not ever.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who so dedicatedly reviews with each chapter and gives me their input. It means so much to me that you care enough to spend a moment sharing your thoughts on this fic! xoxo


	40. Chapter 37: Mending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As you may be able to tell, my ability to update as quickly diminishes when I’m working. Therefore I make no promises about update times. I would, however, like to thank SabbyPandawan for beta’ing this and ensuring I don’t make an arse out of myself, and also thank everyone who had been reading and reviewing with such humbling regularity. Apparently I have people that like what I do, and it’s quite novel and warms the heart.

_** ** _

_**“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.” - Vincent Van Gogh** _

 

Blaine felt like he was drowning. There were waves crashing over his head and each time he surfaced he was dragged back under by them, only able to gasp for short breaths and feel the aches in his body from struggling so hard against the pull of the water. No matter how hard he kicked or paddled to move up, he was pulled further down so that all he could see over him was the roof of the water’s surface where lightning and storm clouds threatened to attack him if he got close.

Each time Blaine felt himself gain consciousness, what he wanted to do first was open his eyes and call for Kurt, but all he could do was scream in agony. His body hurt. He thought that with time his nerves would have dulled to the electrical spasms that seemed to run up and down him, but he found instead that they were being stimulated in one way or another. He felt his stomach being poked at, as if someone was digging into him from the inside out. He felt stinging against the cuts on his back. He felt his jaws burning and the sharp pricking pain that went straight into his brain. Everytime he felt anything, it was so hard, so forceful, that it knocked him back into unconsciousness, back under the waves.

He also heard voices every time he woke up, but with the way his ears felt like they were plugged with water, he couldn’t make it out. Blaine was aware that he was never left alone since the time he had passed out in the cage though. The voices he heard assured him of that. He was also quite sure that his condition was worse than he originally thought when he had first passed out after reaching the camp of the Others.

The fever was the first sign of how bad things were. The first time he woke up, he felt his body shivering, and yet, he wasn’t cold but swelteringly hot. His hair was slicked against his head with his own sweat and that was also the point he managed to get anything more than a whine out of his mouth. However, it wasn’t anything useful, like words; instead he vomited what little stomach acid he had left in him against the ground and then collapsed back into it as his body gave out again.

After that he awoke periodically, and that’s when he heard the voices and felt his body protest in every imaginable way. Eventually, he had a difficult time discerning what was sleep and what was reality as his slumber was dreamless except for the waves that carried him wherever they pleased. He floated on them, half in and half out as the storm raged in quiet blackness overhead, and accepted the emptiness he felt. That was, at least, until an angel spoke to him.

“Blaine… come on… drink some water.”

At first he thought he was finally dead, that his body had had its last straw and given out, but then the voice came above him again, coaxing him to sip water. So he did, or at least tried to by puckering his lips, and for the first time the water he had been existing within felt real, rushing gently against his lips in a slow, cool dribble. He forced his eyes open then and despite them being glazed over with white frost, they still revealed his angel above him.

Kurt.

He wanted to yell, sing to the heavens, and jump up in joy, but his body prevented all that, and no sooner had he realized that not only was he not dead, but that he had also found Kurt, he was under the waves again. This time though, he paddled as hard as he could, trying to find land or at least a place where the water was calm and with each stroke he felt himself grow stronger. More and more he found himself conscious, still for only seconds at a time, but long enough to see that Kurt was always there, always giving him those half-smiles he wore when he was trying to show Blaine that he was happy he was there, but not big enough to make himself seem too excited.

His ears emptied themselves over time as well, and soon he could hear not just Kurt’s beautiful voice, but the language of the Others. At times his limited vision not only held Kurt’s face, but that of of those white-eyed Others, of which there was apparently more than the one he had seen back at the lake. Blaine’s body still felt wrecked, but it wasn’t knocking him back out each time he got up, and so, when he finally surfaced from his constant coma for more than a moment, he tried to speak.

“...ur…” he managed, discovering his tongue and jaws were still quite swollen and sore, making it difficult to make the sharp K and T sounds belonging to his husband’s name.

“Blaine,” was the brittle response from the face above him, and Blaine was sure he could see a couple tears peaking out from the corners of Kurt’s eyes. It made the burning in his gums and the ache in his throat all worth it though, and he tried to smile, wincing at the strain it took to pull the corners of his mouth upwards.

“It’s okay… you’re going to be okay,” Kurt soothed him, and that’s when Blaine found himself not only gifted with Kurt’s face and voice, but also the touch of his fingers as they ever so delicately trailed down Blaine’s cheek before pulling back far enough to not be touching, but close enough to still radiate warmth. It was reminiscent of the way Kurt cared for Blaine when he got sick, taking care of him much the way Blaine remembered his own mother caring for him as a boy. He loved it, and Blaine could have died then and been alright with it.

He didn’t stay awake for long though. The effort was too much for his body to maintain and so he fell into sleep once more despite trying to fight it off. However, it was the start of Blaine beginning to mend, not only physically, but mentally as well. Now he could heal from the months of separation from Kurt. In his heart, he knew Kurt’s words were right. Everything would be okay now.

The hardest thing was being patient with himself. He was frustrated with his inability to stay awake for any length of time, and then with his inability to speak. Food was hard to keep down, and the liquidized meals Kurt teaspooned into him were disgusting. He ate them though, forcing himself to swallow down the vile stuff that Kurt assured him would help him get better. His throat would burn with each sip that slid down into him, and he would suffer through the aftertaste for hours until a fresh supply of slop was fed to him. Moreover, he realized that he was missing several teeth, mostly molars, after letting his tongue skim over the inside of his mouth. It was from the side of his face where he had taken that first punch from Sebastian’s goons, and Kurt continually scolded him for wiggling his tongue in the fresh spaces whenever he was awake.

“You’re just going to irritate your tongue and make it take longer for those spots on your gums to heal up.”

He tried to listen, to be grateful to be alive and in Kurt’s company, but his body was less compliant than his mind wanted it to be. Not only was it constantly inflamed, but it also refused to move, making the novelty of moving his tongue the only thing he could do in the minutes he was awake. He felt as trapped as he had when he had been unconscious, but it seemed even worse because now Kurt was there, teasing him with his mere presence, and Blaine could do little about it.

“It’s going to take you awhile to heal up… you have a lot of broken bones and stitching…”

“Mmm…” was Blaine’s way of acknowledging Kurt’s words without putting too much effort into speaking. Kurt seemed to know how irritated Blaine was with his own body, and reassured him regularly that things would get better, not worse, with time.

He just had to wait.

The best thing was that every time he woke up, Kurt was there. Kurt never left him, and Blaine had to wonder when Kurt was eating and relieving himself. After a period of time (and Blaine had no idea just how much time passed each time he blacked out), he registered that he wasn’t in a room, or even in a proper bed. When he felt the warmth around his body flood away from him and white-eyed Others come around with pitchers of fresh, warm water, he realized he was sleeping in a small pool of some kind.

“The water is helping your cuts and bruises heal up,” Kurt noted to him, following Blaine’s eyes to the steamy water being poured around him and warming him back up.

Blaine wasn’t sure how water helped, and the first thing that popped into his mind was how wasteful it was to use water in such a way. Then he remembered that the Others were the ones controlling the water and it probably wasn’t in such short supply as it was for humans. They could afford to let him float in it.

Kurt wasn’t always alone with Blaine and the white-eyed ones. On one occasion when Blaine woke up, it was to hear Kurt’s voice and that of another Other. He kept his eyes shut on hearing them, not wanting to interrupt Kurt’s conversation, of which he could only understand one half of.

“I’m not going back to training.”  
“She was reporting back to Finavar about me.”  
“I wasn’t learning anything anyhow.”  
“I’m fine here.”  
“No. I won’t leave him alone.”  
“Because, quite frankly, I don’t trust them and I just don’t want to leave him.”  
“It makes perfect sense.”  
“If you don’t understand, that’s your problem, not mine. It’s not my job to make you understand.”  
“Fine then.”

That was the end of the conversation, and once Blaine heard footsteps move away, he opened his eyes and let them focus on the back of Kurt’s head, looking away towards where the footsteps had trailed off.

“..Kur..?”

His husband spun on his feet and what had clearly been a sad face, with his eyes and mouth frowning, lightened up immediately. “Hey… you hungry?”

It was less a question and more of a statement of what was to come. So Blaine ate, or at least allowed himself to be fed, grimacing with each spoonful, which had Kurt smirking and snickering at him. “Well at least the swelling has gone down enough that you can make faces about it.”

He was never sure how much time passed between each waking, and he got the distinct feeling that it was longer than it felt. Kurt always looked so relieved when he woke up, and Blaine wished he could communicate clearly enough to ask questions about his condition. All he was capable of, for the first while at least, was looking at Kurt and uttering out one word at a time, usually Kurt’s name.

The next time Blaine was awakened by Kurt in conversation, the voice of the Other that Kurt was speaking to was much more stern and orotund, and it seemed like Kurt was arguing with him.

“No. I don’t want to know actually.”  
“I keep telling everyone that I’m not going to leave him here with them. I don’t care how trustworthy you think they are because I don’t trust them.”  
“You’d have to force me to get me out of here.”  
“Then I guess I’m an idiot.  Doesn’t mean I’m leaving here.”  
“I will bathe when I’m more comfortable with his wellbeing. If I stink, that’s your problem, not mine. You don’t have to come by after all.”  
“When he’s better, we’ll move to my place.”  
“What?!”  
“Well they’re assholes -”  
“He’s human. He can’t do a damned thing to them.”  
“Is this why you came here?”  
“You know what? Just go. We have nothing to speak about.”

Again footsteps left Kurt behind, though this time when Blaine opened his eyes he could clearly see Kurt’s profile, brow furrowed and eyes narrowed, and with his patented angry glare that was usually reserved for engines that wouldn’t let themselves be fixed.

Blaine usually stayed away from him when he had that face on.

Though once Kurt saw that he was awake, the anger fell off his features and Blaine was greeted with a gentle stroke of Kurt’s hand against his bearded cheek. “Hey… did I wake you? Sorry.”

Blaine offered Kurt a hum of appreciation, leaning his face into Kurt’s hand as much as he could given how stiff his neck was. He didn’t know what problems Kurt was facing with the Others, but he knew that he could at least show Kurt how thankful he was for what Kurt was doing for him.

One of the worst things about his state was the humiliation. Even when Blaine had caught a bad cold or flu, he had never been reduced to being completely immobile, and it was only ever Kurt that had taken care of him. Now he had those white-eyed things constantly around him, which became worse when he realized that except for his bandages, he was otherwise undressed. Kurt insisted on washing him though, very carefully sponging him over and ever mindful of his sore spots, and Blaine half-wished that Kurt would one day need to be taken care of so Blaine could repay the favor. Blaine would be happy to soap up and rinse his naked husband.

On a regular basis, Blaine’s bandages were changed, and that was when he began to get a better sense of the room he was in because he had to be rolled onto his side to get the ones on his back replaced. The room was smaller than it had seemed when he first started waking up, and had various hand drawn diagrams of anatomy on the walls. It looked like it could have been a doctor’s office had it not been for the bed made of chairs, a blanket, and pillow in one corner. A bed which he realized must have been where Kurt was resting.

“You… should… sleep…” he managed to get out to Kurt when he saw that set-up, guilt immediately eating him up from the inside. That set-up in the corner looked more uncomfortable than any of the beds they had slept on during any runs they had made back at home, and was certainly worse than their shared bed.

“I’m fine,” Kurt insisted, working alongside the white-eyed Other on cleaning Blaine’s back. “When you can get into a proper bed, then I’ll sleep beside you.”

It was a nice thought, and one Blaine dozed off to the image of. One day, he would be able to cuddle up alongside Kurt again, hold him in his arms and never let him go. One day things would be normal again.

In the meantime, Blaine did his best to be a good patient. He ate what was offered, took his medicine, let them flex his arms and legs so they wouldn’t atrophy from disuse, and tried to speak more each time he woke up.

“Where… are… we?” he asked as Kurt worked on trimming his beard, which had attained what Kurt insisted was ‘mountain-man’ status - and not in a good way.

“They call it their capital… it’s a land under the ocean,” Kurt answered as he snipped off chunks of the beard and tossed it into a basket to his side.

“How?”

“Protective barriers of some kind. I don’t fully understand the magic… but they’ve been living under the ocean for centuries. They’ve always been on Earth, but went into hiding under water at some point.”

“Why?”

His husband shrugged up his shoulders, and then shook his head at the mass of dark curly beard he dumped into the basket. “Did you honestly stop dealing with this when I left? I’m barely able to put a dent into it.”

That stopped Blaine’s line of questioning into the Others as he let himself be groomed. Once Kurt was done with his beard (which admittedly felt a lot better when it was gone), Kurt trimmed up the long strands of hair that were coiling around Blaine’s ears, cheeks, and neck, all the while chastising him for letting it get so bad.

“They say you’re doing alright… healing as fast as any human they’ve-” Kurt began but then switched gears mid-sentence, sometime after Blaine began to be able to stay awake for longer periods of time. “Anyhow. You’re healing up okay and then we can go to my place.. or.. well a place of our own anyhow.”

“Why not your place?” Blaine uttered.

“It’s an apartment… and meant for one individual, not two… and the council here has also expressed that you, I mean we, might be better off living just outside the main city… it’s more open there. You’ll like it.”

Blaine knew he wasn’t operating at full capacity yet, but he knew when Kurt wasn’t being completely honest. Regardless, he looked forward to being alone with Kurt again, even if it was in the midst of those pointy-eared creatures. It was what he had sacrificed so much for after all.  Together they could figure out what Blaine could do to make himself useful and they’d start anew. Maybe even get a new dog.  

Though no dog could truly replace Pudding.

The day when Blaine could sit up was a major victory, not only for himself, but for Kurt, whom Blaine could see was elated by the development by the way his eyes lit up. It was the first time Blaine had seen his legs in a long time, and despite the progress he was disgusted by how bony and scarred his legs were.

“Hey. It’s okay. We’ll fatten you up and you’ll be your old self,” Kurt assured him.

“Easy for you to say,” Blaine grunted. “You look healthier than you’ve ever been. This place agrees with you.”

Kurt was quiet for a moment, and Blaine swallowed nervously. He had said it out of misplaced agitation, and while it was true, he knew based on Kurt’s conversations with the Others alone that Kurt didn’t completely see himself as one of them.

“It’s easy not to starve here, and I’m not exactly worked as hard as I was in the community either,” Kurt finally said, allowing Blaine to breath in relief that he wasn’t going to stir up Kurt’s ire.

That was also the day Blaine began to eat solid food again, though the way Kurt cut it down into tiny pieces made him feel like he was a toddler. It also meant that it took longer for him to get through the food that Kurt insisted he would like - something that proved to be false, as Blaine discovered after almost auto-ejecting a piece of something green and bitter from his mouth.

“Well, we can try something different for supper,” Kurt said after Blaine forced down the last bite. “I like it though.”

“I can’t complain if I’m not making it,” Blaine grumbled.

“You complain with your eyes and face, Blaine. You don’t always need to say it aloud.”

His husband knew him too well.

Knew him so well, in fact, that Kurt was able to see when Blaine needed help adjusting or just needed a scratch in an itchy spot he couldn’t reach, and would take care of it without Blaine saying anything. Kurt would help him relieve himself (the worst of the humiliation) into the Other equivalent of a bedpan and clean him up without judgement or any commentary. He was there to wipe Blaine’s forehead when the fever came back and there to add warm water when Blaine was cold. Not once did Blaine see or hear him upset over having to do so much, and not once did Blaine regret following after him.

“We’re going to try standing today.”

Blaine winced at the thought of moving his legs, still so sore, when Kurt told him that after what he presumed was supposed to be his breakfast, but managed to make a little nod in his husband’s direction. He wanted to get better, if only to take the stress off Kurt from the burden he felt like.  

Standing, it seemed though, was ninety percent getting upright and ten percent leaning against the table. Overall the effort took about an hour and left Blaine panting for breath. Still, he forced himself through the shockwaves of pain travelling up his legs, into his spine, and up into his brain. If he could stand, he would be closer to walking, and walking meant getting out of the stale, small room for them both.

“I wish they had wheelchairs here…” Kurt scowled as he helped Blaine sit back down.

“I’m glad they don’t... it would be embarrassing.“

“I could at least get you out of here for a bit if they had something. People here though… they tend not to get hurt.”

Blaine lingered for a moment on how Kurt used the term ‘people’ to describe Others. The more he remained conscious, the more he picked up on little things like that. Kurt might not consider himself one of them, but he had accepted them as something on the same level to call them people. He talked about his apartment there, his schedule, a tea place he’d take Blaine to, and other things that made him seem more settled than he would probably admit. On one hand, Blaine was glad Kurt hadn’t seemed to have suffered through the last few months; on the other hand, he was jealous.

The question of how Blaine’s injuries came to be arose when he was sitting up and letting Kurt change the bandages on his back. Fingers traced between the spaces where he felt the cuts on his back and Kurt’s voice came behind him in an angry whisper.

“Who did this to you?”

Honestly, Blaine was surprised Kurt hadn’t asked earlier, but surmised that Kurt didn’t want to rile him up if that became the case. “Sebastian and the other Warblers we ousted from the community…”

Kurt cleared his throat and let his fingers slide around to Blaine’s sides, settling there carefully as Blaine felt Kurt’s lips gently press against the top of his back. He didn’t say anything else as he proceeded to wipe over the wounds or place a fresh bandage over them, and Blaine wondered if Kurt had even heard his response. The Kurt he knew would have become instantly incensed and sworn revenge, not coolly continued his care of his husband.

“... they’ve started up their own community not far from the coast. I came across them when I was travelling there and they captured and beat me before turning me in to the Others.”

Again Kurt cleared his throat, swallowing down hard and averting his eyes from Blaine’s as he came around to Blaine’s front side and checked the bandages on his torso.

“Your incision stitching is almost healed up…”

“Kurt… “

His husband shook his head, still avoiding his eyes. “No… I’m sorry I asked.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t do anything about it. We’re under the water. As much as I want to go up there and shoot an arrow in his ass, I can’t.”

That was more like the man Blaine called his husband.  

“You’re trapped down here forever?”

Kurt nodded sadly, leaning against the table Blaine was still sitting up on, trying to improve his stamina at the otherwise simple task.  

“I made a deal that the community would be unharmed and untouched so long as I came…. “

“And what deal did you make for me?”

Kurt shook his head.  “I… “

“I heard you talking to Others sometimes when I was in and out of sleep… they didn’t want me here, did they? You had to make a deal.”

“They’re just afraid of you.”

Blaine snorted softly. The very thought that Others, with all their powers, would be scared of him was laughable. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I know. They think you might try to attack them or something.”

“I wouldn’t do anything that would take me away from you.”

Kurt nodded, looking towards the ground where he was nudging his toe into the floor. “I know that. They don’t.”

“Should I be worried?”

A sigh, and then Kurt was glancing up at the ceiling absently. “I don’t think they’ll try to hurt you… but I still don’t want to leave your side.”

“I’m okay with that,” Blaine offered in way of a joke. “But, honestly angel, you can probably go and wash up and get a proper sleep in a proper bed. I’m not going anywhere and I feel like if they were going to do anything to me, you wouldn’t exactly have gotten in their way anyhow.”

“Angel…” Kurt mouthed, the corner of his mouth twitching up into a grin before he brought his chin down so he could flash that grin towards Blaine. “Are you saying I stink?”

“Never,” Blaine grinned back, lifting a hand and reaching out for Kurt. “Now c’mere so I can kiss you.”

Kurt was tender with him, the most shy he had ever been in terms of the affection part of their relationship, but Blaine figured it had to do with how broken he was. Kurt didn’t want to hurt him was all. Once he was better, they could have more than chaste little kisses again. God knew he was having a difficult time thinking unsexy thoughts whenever Kurt washed him down there.

“I need to tell you something...” Kurt told him on the day they had begun working on walking with Blaine, who was stumbling and tripping more than walking. “... it’s my fault you’re not all better yet.”

Blaine furrowed his brows up, trying to think back to see if he could remember Kurt somehow hindering the healing process, though all he could come up with were the recent memories of Kurt caring for him. “I don’t understand…”

“Somehow I made it so magic wouldn’t work on you… either to hurt you or heal you… and if I could figure out how to reverse that… then a healer could just… do their thing and fix you,” Kurt uttered quietly, eyes watching Blaine’s small footsteps.

“So that’s why they couldn’t kill me…” Blaine murmured thoughtfully, recalling how the hands of Others kept falling away from him back on land. “... If someone tried to hurt me with a sword or dagger though… would it -”

“If the weapon was made with magic, then it would have stopped it.”

“Well… all things being equal Kurt, I think it’s better that I’m alive and feeble as hell than decapitated - don’t you think?”

His husband let out one of his long, exasperated sighs and looked up. “Yes, but if I could remove the spell or curse…or whatever the hell I did to you, then you wouldn’t have to be suffering now.”

Blaine looked over himself. He was sore, weak, and has discolorations from scars all over. The bruises had faded, and his bones were mending. He needed to eat more, but that was a slow process of acclimating to the food available and letting his stomach expand to a normal size.

“Do I look like I’m suffering?”

“You don’t look healthy.”

It was his turn to sigh then as he shuffled towards Kurt, akin to an old man in need of a walker, and set a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll get there. You’ll make sure of it, I know.”

“You’d better. I’m the only Quarterling in this place and you’ll be the only Human here. We need to be able to stand tall and be confident,” Kurt asserted as he reached to support Blaine by the arms.  

“That doesn’t bother me,” Blaine responded, pulling his arms away from Kurt. He had to be able to walk on his own, without support.

Kurt pulled his arms back, though it wasn’t lost on Blaine how he still kept them up just in case he needed to catch Blaine. “It might not now… but if we end up here for a lifetime, it could.”

“Kurt. I came here for you. That’s all I want. I don’t care about them.”

Kurt sighed, watching Blaine force himself to scoot across the floor with gritted teeth and finally relenting by folding his arms over his chest. “They’ll be your neighbours… the ones you go to for food and drink and supplies… they’re the ones you’ll see on the street each day… Blaine, as much as I find the notion of what you did romantic, it also means that you’re giving up a lot. That family we created out of friends and their kids, the job you worked hard at - all those things mean nothing here now. You’re starting from scratch and I’m worried that it’ll eat at you.”

Blaine reached the wall and held a hand against it, taking in a deep breath. Walking was hard on stiff legs. How the hell did babies have the energy for it? Still, pride forced him to let go of the wall and work back towards the table. “Kurt, you lived in that community for years and never really fit in, especially after what happened when Sebastian made his deal with the devil and people started getting ideas about your background. If you were able to do that there, I can do it here.”

“I hope you’re right Blaine,” Kurt murmured, glancing over Blaine as he shuffled along. “Because you’re looking like we might be able to move out of this place and into one of our own.”

 

 


	41. Chapter 38: Fluff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to my lovely beta Sabby and to all of you that continue to review and read so dedicatedly!

_** ** _

_**“The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.” - Woodrow Wilson** _

  
  


Kurt watched his husband from his bed made of chairs. Blaine’s face was recognizable again, the bandages had come off, the bruises had faded, and there were now only scars where gashes had once been. He was sleeping so soundly, without the help of sedatives or painkillers, and had lost the horrible whining noise that was the result of his nose being broken and healing. It was time to move Blaine out of this room and into something more permanent, but, for some reason, Kurt was having a hard time making that final call. He could have probably done it a few days prior, but each day he made an excuse, and now he was out of excuses to make.

The little voice within him, id, ego, or whatever it was - he had only read that book on old psychology theories once before returning it to the library, told him that it was probably because moving Blaine into a permanent residence would make things permanent, and Kurt wasn’t terribly sure if that was fair to Blaine. Finavar had told him that the council didn’t want Blaine to reside in the common apartments, and so they had actually had a home built just outside the capital for them. It didn’t make any sense to Kurt, who had witnessed the initial news reports on the Tides and seen just how devastating the Others had been to humanity. There was nothing they could fear from Blaine, and yet they did. Enough, at least, to decide to keep him out of town as much as possible. However, Blaine was an absolute kitten at heart - playful, curious, and loving. Regardless of what evils the Others had committed against his family in the past, Kurt knew that Blaine wouldn’t have come all the way below the ocean to just create chaos. There was only one reason Blaine was there, and it was him.

Which led Kurt to another set of thoughts that had him concerned. If Blaine had come all that way for Kurt, what if he became tired of Kurt one day? What if they grew apart? What would happen to Blaine then? In Kurt’s mind, he wasn’t likely to ever tire or fall out of love with Blaine, but he worried that he wouldn’t be enough for his husband to be happy with either, and Kurt just couldn’t figure out how he would, on his own, be able to replace all that Blaine had given up to be there with him. Friends, children, a job he seemed to like, a home, and, most of all, a community that accepted him for what he was. It was a fair amount to stack up against just one man, and yet Blaine had chosen Kurt over it all. That was a lot of pressure on him to ensure that Blaine was happy.

Kurt couldn’t even seem to figure out how to find food that Blaine liked down below.

Still, looking at Blaine, Kurt wanted nothing more than to be able to curl up beside him. Nothing was more inviting than Blaine’s side. Kurt knew how much heat he radiated, how he smelled of security, and how Blaine would hold him, and it had dug hooking needles into his heart to watch Blaine sleep as he recovered and not be able to cuddle up alongside him. Moving Blaine to a home they could share would allow Kurt to be able to do that.

“Mmmm-grung…” Blaine huffed out, followed by a series of sleepy snuffles. His body twitched in sleep and Kurt knew that he was dreaming. He had watched him so many times before, and since weaning Blaine off the sedatives, Blaine seemed to dream with more regularity. It was a relief to be able to see that though. Before, Blaine’s sleep was dead and lifeless, such that Kurt would regularly get up from his chairs to make sure Blaine was still breathing in slumber.  

“I have the information you requested,” Vila’s voice intruded into his thoughts and Kurt looked to the door where she stood.  

“Thank you,” Kurt grunted, forcing his aching body to stand and go collect the paper from her. “Did they say anything else?”

“No. Just that your items have been relocated to this residence.”

Kurt nodded and Vila walked off with that little bit of acknowledgment. He looked over the paper, the map to what would be his new home. His and Blaine’s. It was just by the field where he had spent so much time practicing his archery. A nice enough location - not that Kurt had yet discovered a place in this world that wasn't beautiful. Kurt’s right arm had gotten soft in the time he had spent in this room, waiting for Blaine to recover. He couldn’t recall the last time he had gone so long without shooting off an arrow, and he knew the first time he went to practice again that his arm would be sore.

Eventually, after staring blankly at the paper before him for awhile, Kurt did shuffle back to his self made bed and dozed off, dreaming of the forest where he used to hunt. Remnants of memory tricked him into feeling the cold of the winter forest, and smelling the balsam, spruce, and tamarack trees that grew up in small clusters on the prairie. His boots would crunch as he walked, stepping on the mix of snow and twigs as he sought out his prey. Pudding would sometimes find him out there, threading herself around his feet despite being so tall for a dog. On those occasions he would scold her for being so noisy and also working to trip him up, yet he could never stay mad at that dog, Blaine's dog, because, like Blaine, she was always full of good intentions and sweetness.  

"Kurt?"

He winced, seeing Blaine now in his dream, and wondering how he had crept up on him so easily. Blaine was many things but a silent stepper, he was not. Regardless, Kurt smiled his way and set a finger to his lips, because something inside him told him a deer was nearby.

"Kurt?"

Didn't Blaine understand that he needed to be quiet? Again he pressed a finger to his lips and then crouched, the deer suddenly before him in a clearing where a moment ago it had been full of trees. He pulled an arrow from his quiver and lined it up, holding in a breath as he aimed.

"Kurt?"

His eyes snapped open, and the dream was gone, though Blaine was still there, crouched in front of him and gently rubbing Kurt's arm. "..uh?"

"You were twitching and murmuring in your sleep... I was afraid you'd fall off this... setup you have going."

Kurt blinked the sleep from his eyes, refocusing on Blaine, the real one, in front of him now. "Oh god... that position has to hurt. Stand up. Sit.."  he argued upon seeing the way Blaine's face contorted with the effort of bending over by Kurt. Kurt sat himself up quickly, making space for Blaine on a chair beside him, which his husband held onto with a hand as he maneuvered his body into it to sit as Kurt beckoned him to.

"I'll be fine," Blaine grumbled as Kurt checked him over, making sure the casts on his hands and legs were still intact and not cracked. "I think you're making too big a fuss over me. It only took me a little while to be able to walk again after all. My bones can't be that bad."

"Mmmhmm..." Kurt huffed, ignoring Blaine's attempts to shoo him away from his rib bindings. "And just how long do you think you've been here for?"

"One... maybe two weeks?" Blaine offered, reaching back behind his head to rub it as he thought about the question.

Kurt's jaw fell away from his face as he looked up at Blaine and then lifted his head up to look Blaine square in the eyes as he prepared himself to offer Blaine the truth. "Try two months."

Blaine's mouth hung open, eyes becoming rounder as he looked to Kurt to see if it was a joke and then swallowing back his breath with a gulp as he realized that Kurt wasn't lying. "Two months? TWO? Oh god... I mean... I knew I slept a lot... but I didn't know..."

"For the first week all you did was sleep," Kurt sighed, remembering how little he slept in turn, not wanting to miss Blaine waking... if he did. "And then you would wake up for a little bit at a time and sleep a day or two between those instances..."

"Kurt… I didn't even realize..."

"It got better once we slowly weaned you off the sedatives and painkillers though... I mean. Of course you were sleeping so much with that in your system, plus the fact that your body was focusing on fixing... "

"You've been here, in this little room, for two months? Kurt..."

Kurt shrugged, glancing towards the bed that was now void of Blaine. "You came all this way for me. It was the least I could do."

"I missed Christmas."

Kurt blinked and looked back at Blaine curiously, brow perking upwards.

"You always liked that time of year."

The corner of Kurt's mouth twitched up of its own accord as he thought back to the effort the community, and himself in turn, put into Christmas. Even though they were surrounded by trees, they would still chop down a few to put up and decorate in the public buildings, and Kurt had made an effort to find a nice small one for their own cabin, threading popcorn with string and using crafts made by the kids as ornaments. Blaine would discover toys on runs to gift the children with and Kurt would make their friends new clothing they needed out of the hides of animals he had killed. They would host a dinner in their home, with Kurt using up many of the rations he had stored away throughout the year for the occasion, and exchange gifts. Every year, Blaine would find him a new phone or music player, and Kurt would make Blaine a new notebook, bound in leather, for him to make his notes in about the animals and people he cared for.  

"I didn't even know... the seasons don't change down here."

"Really?" Blaine asked, looking towards the door. There was no window in the room, and so he had not yet seen any glimmer of what lay outside.

Kurt nodded. "They keep it temperate all year long. No rain, no snow, no clouds... just a fake blue sky. It's never too hot, or too cold."

"Weird..." Blaine uttered and then shrugged up his shoulders. "I guess I'll have to get used to not complaining about the cold."

Kurt let out a small chuckle and then pinched his lips back together, standing up as he reached for Blaine's hands. "Come on. One last clean up and then we'll get you in some clothing and I'll show you our new home."

Blaine was nothing if not grateful for being dressed, and if it had been up to Kurt, he would have been dressed a long time ago. He knew the Ilu were as asexual as they came, completely disinterested in Blaine's body in that sense, and they very rarely sired Halflings, but Kurt still didn't like that he had to be exposed all the time, and he fathomed that Blaine probably felt the same, even if he didn't say as much given how eager Blaine was to pull on the clothing Kurt had ordered for him. It was cotton, simple and loose, so that Blaine was comfortable. In addition, Kurt gave him another quick beard and hair trim, and then bade farewell to the little room that had been their prison for the past two months as he escorted Blaine out into the main hall, and out the front door.

Blaine took in a small gasp as he first adjusted to the light, and then to the capital before him, eyes once again forming into saucers as he took it all in. Again his mouth hung open, but this time in wonder instead of shock. Kurt followed his gaze over the buildings that continued on for miles, to the field and forest beyond it. Blaine paused in place and Kurt let him, standing aside him patiently before he squeezed his hand to let him know he was good to keep walking.

“Are you sure we’re under water?”

Kurt smiled weakly and nodded Blaine’s way. “Yeah.  Kind of… unreal huh?”

“No kidding. I can’t even…How is this possible?”

“Magic.”

“Yeah… yeah…”

Their walk was slow. Blaine needed occasional breaks and during those points Kurt pointed out the different things around them while Blaine sat to catch his breath. The tea house, the training center, the different markets, all of it - excluding the open bathing area which he saw Blaine look towards with ever widening eyes. Kurt still couldn’t look that way without blushing, though it seemed his husband had no such problem, even turning his head to continue to look at them as they passed by.

“Uh... Kurt?”

“Yeah. I know.”

As they walked, Kurt couldn’t help but notice the stares they got from others. The Ilu, who had worked on Blaine, didn’t pay him any mind, but the rest watched and whispered. Purebloods pulled away from them, even if they were already on the other side of the street, and the Halflings gawked. Kurt held back the trembling threatening to rise within him - outraged on Blaine’s behalf, and instead walked taller with his chest puffed out, eyes glaring back at them all in challenge.  

They reached the newly built home, made just for them, and Kurt opened the door for Blaine who trudged in, eyed the chairs set by a table, and went to sit directly in one. It was the longest stretch of walking he had done, and while Kurt was proud of him for it, he also knew it couldn’t have been easy.

“You want to just rest there while I check this place out?” Kurt suggested, getting a weary nod in response.

The home was made with the same floorplan as his mother’s home was. There was an entry that opened to both sides - one with the table and chairs that connected to a kitchen that was already stocked for them, and one side with a living area that led back to what would be their bedroom, which already had Kurt’s clothing along with a few sets of clothing made to Blaine’s size hung up in the wardrobe. His quiver and bow were hung up in the entryway, and the books he had left at his apartment, homework from Mab, were sitting on a table beside the couch in their living area. It was as open as his apartment had been, yet, with two people intended to occupy it, it seemed so much more homey.

“Kurt. This dining and kitchen area is bigger than our whole cabin was…” Blaine commented, having caught his breath, upon Kurt’s return to him.

“They believe in comfort,” Kurt noted as he went to the kitchen to collect two glasses which he filled with water for them both, holding one out to Blaine who took it greedily and chugged it down.

“Well… it’s nice they have that option… being comfortable that is.”

Kurt helped Blaine to their room, where again Blaine made mention of the opulence as Kurt showed him the bath and how to use the faucets there. Then he helped Blaine lay down and no sooner than he had, Blaine was patting the space beside him.

Kurt hesitated, and he couldn’t figure out why as he finally crawled up into the spot beside Blaine and finally… FINALLY… nestled up alongside Blaine, ever mindful that Blaine was still healing and that he had to be careful where he set himself. His heart raced as he looked Blaine up and down, ensuring that he was well supported and that he wasn’t putting any strain on his body anywhere. Then his heart lurched upwards and settled, matching time with Blaine’s pulse that he could now feel through his skin. This was home. This was real comfort.

“These sheets are softer than anything I’ve ever felt before…”

“Yeah... they’re pretty nice,” Kurt admitted, fingering the white cloth below them that he often imagined was made of clouds and silk.

“And these pillows don’t smell like the chicken coops…”

“They stuff them with something puffy… not feathers.”

“Do we even need a blanket without the cold?”

Kurt smirked, reaching up to press a finger gently against Blaine’s lips to silence his line of questions. “Rest. You had a long walk.”

Blaine complied and they napped together, Kurt reveling in the sleep. Too long he had been forcing himself to rest on those hard, wooden things the Ilu had in their center, and never for very long as he wanted to make sure he was always available for Blaine when he was awake. In fact, Kurt napped so long, and so soundly, that when he did wake up, it was Blaine who was up before him, running the water into the tub and adding soap to make a mountain of bubbles - some of which had floated off the pile and were hovering around the tub until they popped into nothingness.

“What’re you doing? You want a bath already?” Kurt murmured, hugging the pillow to him that Blaine had been resting on and inhaling his scent. Blaine didn’t quite smell as Kurt remembered him, probably because of the different oils and soaps that were used on him, but his sweat still smelled the same. A blend of salt and freshly tilled dirt - which sounded unappealing but was heavenly as far as Kurt was concerned.

“No. It’s for you.”

“You think I smell?”

“You’ve only been giving yourself washdowns with rags while you’ve been ensuring I’ve been thoroughly scrubbed.”

Kurt held Blaine’s gaze and clucked his tongue down. “So I stink.”

Blaine chuckled, the sound so beautifully musical that it lit up Kurt’s heart as he sat up and then ambled over to the tub, where he stripped himself down and stepped in. It had been so long since he’d had a proper bath, and he groaned in delight as he sat down and back in the tub and shut his eyes. “Thank you.”

“I owe you a few.”

“You owe me nothing,” Kurt murmured, letting his head drape back over the edge as he enjoyed the moment, though he thought it would be better if they were sharing cheesecake. The foods the Others had were good, but lacking in saccharine, and while the community only occasionally had desserts, they at least made ones thick with honey to sweeten it.

“I thought that after this you could practice your shooting,” Blaine said, breaking up Kurt’s images of cakes and pies and pastries and replacing it instead with targets and arrows and bows.

“I’m okay with doing whatever you want to do Blaine….”

“I saw the bow and arrow by the door Kurt, so I know you haven’t given it up, which means you haven’t even aimed the thing while I’ve been bed bound. Don’t give up your biceps on account of me.”

Blaine still knew him.  He hadn’t forgotten, or at least still appreciated Kurt’s muscular arms which did feel rather doughy at present. “Fine. But you’re expected to sit on the grass and watch. No overexerting yourself.”

“Yes, dear.”

Kurt enjoyed the bath as long as he could, waiting until the water went cool to the touch and his hair was already drying after he had shampooed and rinsed it. Then he dressed himself and gathered up the pillows from the bed to make Blaine a nest to sit in outside.

“I’ll be alright, Kurt…”

“And you’ll be better if you have some cushion.”

He received an eyeroll in response, along with a snorted out, “yes mother,” but Blaine conceded and sat himself down in the pile of pillows as Kurt stretched his arms and shoulders out to prepare for what was going to be a lesson in why one should never stop practicing.

As he predicted, his arm grew cramped quickly, but he pushed himself through it so that he could let Blaine take in his surroundings for as long as possible. The usual crowd gathered to watch Kurt shoot arrows, but what Kurt hadn’t anticipated was that several of them turned their attention to Blaine instead of Kurt, whispering among themselves as they stared. The change in their attentions put Kurt on edge, and along with the spasming in his arms, his spine tensed.  

Blaine seemed to take it in stride though, just watching Kurt practice and offering him those giant toothy smiles whenever Kurt looked his way. He clapped when Kurt made a particularly difficult shot, and though Kurt was sure that Blaine was aware of the eyes on him, Blaine ignored them, all his attention on Kurt instead.

That didn’t stop the staring though, and a couple of the ones who seemed particularly interested in Blaine slowly crept towards him until Blaine could no longer ignore them. Kurt watched carefully, ready to launch an arrow into anyone who dared do anything to his husband, as the pair sat themselves near Blaine, and Blaine, being his typical friendly self, offered them a kind hello.

Based on how Finavar had told him that the council didn’t want Blaine living in town because the people there feared that Blaine would pose a threat, Kurt was sure that the intentions of the Others near Blaine couldn’t possibly be kind. However, as Kurt lowered his bow and walked towards his husband, he was shocked to hear that not only had the greetings been returned, but that those Others sitting by Blaine were actually being quite polite in turn.

“Your dark hair reminds me of my human father.”  
“I forgot how short humans were.”  
“Do you know how to play a lute? My father could play a lute.”  
“I had human siblings and a human mother. They all died awhile ago. I miss them.”

Kurt stood, dumbfounded by what he was hearing. This wasn’t at all what Finavar had him expecting the reaction to Blaine to be. Still, it made sense that Halflings wouldn’t be as distrusting of humans as Purebloods were, and Purebloods were the ones running the council after all. That being considered, Purebloods had also been the ones to mate with humans to sire Halflings in the first place. Though trying to make sense of things in this place was something that was beyond Kurt.  

Blaine smiled, peeking over at Kurt with a twinkle in his eyes that told Kurt he was okay, before responding to each of the questions and comments with patience and care. Eventually, more Halflings joined the fray, and Kurt was left to watch in stunned silence as the attention previously afforded to him and his archery was instead given to Blaine.  He returned to practicing his archery then, watching Blaine out of the corner of his eye and letting relief flood over him. Not just because it seemed like Blaine might be able to find a place in this world after all, but because, for the first time since he had been down below, Kurt was finally able to practice without everyone’s eyes on him.

When Kurt could no longer move his arm without swearing under his breath, he declared his practice over and Blaine said his farewells to the gathered group, insisting on helping Kurt take the now grass stained pillows back into the house.

“They were really fascinated by my hair.”

“Maybe it’s because you get furrier the older you get,” Kurt muttered, rolling his shoulders back and popping them out a bit with a groan.

“Very funny. Seriously though - none of them have beards or anything and you always took forever to grow anything on your face. Is hairlessness a thing here?” Blaine asked, his hands being swatted away by Kurt when he tried to reach over to massage Kurt’s shoulders.

“Save your strength for your own healing, and there are hairy Others - but they mainly stay in the forest because they’re Berserkers and their hair is on account of the animal they shift into.”

“Like that dog-man-Other thing we saw by the lake…” Blaine muttered, withdrawing his hands into his lap.

“Exactly. Apparently, they just hang around naked in the forest and don’t bother to wear anything unless they come into town,” Kurt explained as he cracked his fingers and then stepped towards the kitchen. “Tea?”

“Yeah… wow. Tea. I haven’t had that in ages… it would be such a waste of water up top,” Blaine said with awe in his voice. It was true, tea was a treat up top, but down below it was an expected part of the day. “So they just run around naked all day?”

Kurt made a hum of affirmation as he went into the kitchen, rooting around the teas he had been supplied with until he found one he hoped Blaine would like and then set the kettle on the blue-fired stove. “As far as I know. I haven’t really looked into it.”

“Why not?”

“Because… I just haven’t.”

“Seems to me like you should try to learn more about the place and the occupants if you’re going to be here for a while Kurt.”

Kurt sighed. His mother had said something very similar to him when he had been there for a couple weeks and had interrupted her latest explanation of one custom of some group or another. He didn’t care then, and he still really didn’t. Unless it was of some kind of importance to his survival, Kurt didn’t see the point in learning all the minutia of Other life. “Anyhow… just like that bath on the street we passed by -”

“Yeah. That was kind of crazy.”

“- they really don’t care about nudity here.”

“So have you ever…” Blaine began, just as the kettle began to whistle. Kurt grimaced at the suggestion and poured their teas, not answering until he stepped back to the table and set the tea out before them both.

“No. Not my style.”

“I figured as much,” Blaine said with a chuckle as he sipped the tea and then peered down at it. “What flavor is this?”

“Some kind of plant that grows deep in the ocean waters. I’ve never been able to pronounce the name…”

Their conversation was interrupted by a knock on the door, and while Blaine lifted a curious eyebrow, Kurt stood up and went to open it, finding Midhir standing there with a bright, sunshiny face and a basket of more teas.

“Hello Midhir. Come in,” Kurt said as he stood back, accepting what he assumed was a housewarming gift and closing the door behind Midhir. “Blaine. This is Midhir.”

“Howya sir!” Midhir said, his voice suddenly changing in pitch as an accent overtook him. He went to offer Blaine his hand who shook it from where he still sat.

“I’d get up to say hello but Kurt would probably scold me for it.”

Kurt snorted at that, even though it was true, and went to the kitchen to collect a cup of tea for Midhir while the water was still warm. “You like that Ash Spice right?”

“Right,” Midhir responded, voice going back to what Kurt considered normal for him. “So Mab wants to know when you will be back to train.”

Kurt rolled his eyes, shook his head and held out a cup of tea to Midhir, who took it where he sat himself at the table beside Kurt. “I’m not. I told you that already when you came by the Ilu center.”

“You should though. What else do you intend to do with your time?”

“Enjoy it for once maybe?” Kurt said with a huff, glancing sidelong to Blaine who looked confused by the conversation.

“With him? You’ll outlive him Kurt. You should put some thought into that.”

Blaine continued to look confused, his brow bunching those caterpillar eyebrows together as he watched Midhir. A thought struck Kurt and his own eyes narrowed as he looked back to Midhir. “Are you speaking in Other?”

“Well, yes. Of course,” Midhir stammered, looking confused as to why that would even be a question to be asked of him.

“Well stop. Speak English. You grew up in Ireland right? You can speak it.”

“Why? It’s not like it concerns him.”

“Because it’s rude,” Kurt huffed, trying to contain the irritation rising in his body.  

“Apologies then,” Midhir said, a noticeable shift in his voice once again that made Kurt wonder how they managed to switch from one language to another since Other was evidently innate. With the shift came back the accent he had noticed earlier, but one that was still understandable. “You should still continue your training.”

“What training?” Blaine piped up then, verifying to Kurt that he could understand what was being spoken.

“I was training with an Other named Mab to try and figure out my abilities,” Kurt answered, glancing back to Blaine. “She was reporting back to the council about my progress though.”

“It’s her job to,” Midhir insisted with a shake of his head. “Can’t fault her for that. Besides, your grandfather wanted to know how things were going.”

“Grandfather?” Blaine sputtered, setting his own teacup down on the table.

Kurt sighed, “yeah… he’s the one in charge of support magics on the council.”

“She’s pretty insistent Kurt. I told her I’d come out and broach the subject with you again, but next time it’ll be her that stops by, I’m sure.”

“So let her,” Kurt said, waving a hand dismissively at the thought. “I’ll tell her the same. I wasn’t learning anything from her anyhow.”

“It’s a shame to waste your potential though.”

“Kurt’s potential has always been limitless,” Blaine spoke up, eyes set on Midhir. “I don’t think it could be wasted.”

“His magical potential though.”

Blaine shrugged, and Kurt felt Blaine’s hand set itself on his knee under the table. “Kurt saved us, and me, several times over through the years. I think he’s got it figured out as much as he needs to.”

Midhir looked from Blaine to Kurt, eyes flickering with thoughts unspoken before he directed his attention solely back to Kurt again. “You could be so much more.”

“I’m happy to be what I am.”  

Midhir shook his head, a frown creasing his features. “Oh well then. It’s been good to see you Kurt. I’ve missed our tea times. Perhaps once you settle in here we can reestablish them.”

Kurt let out a sigh, watching Midhir rise up and standing to see Midhir out. “Yeah. Sure. Good to see you Midhir.”

It was frustrating to Kurt, though he could partially understand Midhir’s concern as a Halfling that had lived more of his life in this place where magic was the center of every custom, attitude, and belief. Blaine wore a scowl on Kurt’s return to the table, and as Kurt poured him another cup of tea, the reason behind the face came out.

“I don’t like him.”

“He’s the only friend I’ve made down here,” Kurt said plainly, adding more water to his own tea.

“He likes you.”

Kurt snickered at that and shook his head. “Doubtful. I’m pretty sure he has a thing for Mab.”

“He has a stupid cherub face and he likes you.”

It forced more chuckles out of Kurt and he sniggered as he looked to his husband. “Honestly?  You’re jealous of him?”

“Yes… No…” Blaine sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t like the way he looks at you though.”

“And just how is that?” Kurt asked, leaning back in his seat as he sipped his tea.

“Like he wants to eat you and I’m getting in his way.”

Kurt rolled his eyes, and for the first time in months knew the gesture wouldn’t be wasted because Blaine understood it well enough. Hell, if anyone got their eyes rolled at, it was Blaine. Kurt had rolled his eyes at him when he was being sappy, when he was being goofy, and now when he was being unreasonably jealous. Kurt had only seen the jealous side of Blaine once before though, and it was because Kurt had been spending more time helping with Sam and Mercedes’ twins than with him.  

“So… do I get to meet your grandfather?” Blaine asked that night as they settled into bed, watching Kurt expectantly where he was closing the curtains to block out the artificial light that was perpetually cast over the town.

“No,” Kurt said firmly, settling down beside Blaine and tucking his outstretched arm in so he wouldn’t crush it with his weight on top of it like Blaine seemed to intend him to. “Because then I’d have to see him too and I don’t even like him.”

Blaine smoothed his thumb over Kurt’s arm, looking at him adoringly with those bright honey eyes. “Why’s that, angel?”

Kurt took in a breath at the term of endearment, never tiring of hearing it. He was sure Blaine used it purposely to break down the walls inside him, and it worked. “Families aren’t the same out here as they are with humans. He’s only blood, and he’s only interested in me at all because I’m a Quarterling and therefore novel. He has no interest in me as an individual at all.”

“Well, then he’s foolish,” Blaine murmured drowsily, snaking a hand under Kurt to wrap around his waist even though Kurt had tried to prevent it. “I’ve been looking forward to this since we napped.”

“Sleeping?” Kurt asked, smirk on his face as he let his hand swing over Blaine’s hip. “Or sleeping with someone who no longer stinks?”

“Holding you,” Blaine uttered, slanting his head forward so it was pressed against Kurt’s. “Being with you like I should.”

It wasn’t at all lost on Kurt that Blaine was sporting an erection through his cotton trousers, and while he was admittedly getting flush in the cheeks and hard in his own pants, his fingers grazed over the bumps of Blaine’s scarring on his back - a sharp reminder of the raised flesh stained in purple and red that came from Sebastian or one of his lackeys. It was a quick antidote to the arousal swirling in his stomach, and allowed Kurt to gently nudge Blaine to lay on his back, the best position for restorative sleep, and kissed his cheek before settling down in a similar position aside him.

“Good night, Blaine.”

Breakfast the next morning was when Kurt finally had to tell Blaine something he had been dreading. As they sipped their tea, Kurt still half asleep with his mouth pressed against the rim of his cup so he could easily take another sip once one was downed, Blaine looked up at him and tilted his head to the side.

“Hey Kurt?”

“Hmm?”  

“Do you think we could maybe find some deer jerky or rabbit stew or something? I mean… what you’ve been making is great… but I could really go for something meaty.”

Kurt sighed, looking down into the steamy liquid just under his nose before setting the cup down and looking at Blaine steadily. “I need to tell you something.”

“What?”

“They don’t… they don’t really eat meat down here…”

Kurt cringed as he watched Blaine’s expression fall, like he had crushed a dream. “You mean… they’re vegetarians?”

“Well… not exclusively.  I mean… most of the Halflings I’ve spoken to have eaten meat back on the surface… but out of respect to the Berserkers, they don’t eat it down here.”

“Oh… God…”

“I’m sorry.”

Blaine nibbled over his lower lip, absently looking at the table top before looking back to Kurt. “I really liked your rabbit stew…”

“I know.”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

Kurt sucked in a breath, his mind spinning with the memory of the deal he had made for Blaine’s safety. He still hadn’t told Blaine a thing about it, and now just didn’t know how to bring it up. This was the opportunity though, and yet, he couldn’t seem to get the words out of his mouth.

“I… uh… my mother is alive too.”

“She is?”

Kurt nodded, looking down at the tea once more. His brain hammered with the word LIAR repeatedly, and while he knew he hadn’t lied, he also hadn’t been forthcoming with the truth. All he had done was admit one thing Blaine might have presumed instead of telling him the thing he should know.

“Do I… get to meet her?”

“You already have actually,” Kurt murmured quietly, forcing himself to take a sip of his tea so Blaine wouldn’t catch on that anything was amiss. “She was the one who found you up top.”

“She was?” Blaine blinked a few times and then made a small o with his mouth. “She said your name. She said your name and that’s when I knew everything would be alright.”

“You can meet her when she comes back down. She’s on duty right now… a healer,”  Kurt explained as he made a mental note to thank his mother and ask her forgiveness for his dramatics when she got back down. She had, in a roundabout way, given Blaine back to him after all.

“... and that’s how you found out that I couldn’t be healed…” Blaine murmured thoughtfully as Kurt continued to suck back his tea and hope for its caffeinating effects to kick in.

Their first few days together was a medley of rediscovering one another without having Ilu around them, and letting Blaine get used to the new home. They napped leisurely, cooked and ate together, and otherwise just reminisced about things they had done in the community. Kurt showed Blaine that he had, indeed, found the Christmas present Blaine had brought for him, and together they listened to the music that they had once spent time analyzing the meaning of. Blaine even sang for him, testing the limits of his voice that had been still for far too long. It was beautiful. The most difficult parts of the day were the morning and evening. His body reacted to Blaine, and Blaine’s reacted to him, but Kurt made a point of pulling away and giving Blaine space in the bed because he didn’t want to hurt him by doing something Blaine wasn’t ready for.  

So it came as no surprise when, a few days into their settling, that Blaine watched Kurt with ravenous eyes after Kurt stepped out of the bath and patted himself dry with a towel.

“Do I really look that bad?”

Kurt blinked and looked over his husband. Blaine had begun to put the weight he had lost back on, his casts were merely supportive bandages now, and the only remnants of his attack that Kurt could see were the scars. Regardless of that, he still, and always, had been attractive to Kurt because he was not just handsome, but also the only person to truly care for Kurt and make him feel safe since his dad died.

“No. Why would you even say that?”

“Because… every time we nap or sleep or cuddle on the couch you end up pushing me away…”

“Oh for…” Kurt took in a deep breath, rolled his eyes, and stomped over to Blaine. “You are fine… but you’re also healing. I know us. If I let us get too far then I could hurt you or-”

“I’m not that fragile, Kurt.”

Kurt looked over his husband’s face, so sweetly insistent, and spared him a small smile. “I will not be the cause of another break or strain or anything else for you.”

It seemed like Blaine was only listening to his own voice though, or that perhaps Kurt hadn’t come across as adamant as he intended, because Blaine set his hands on Kurt’s naked hips and bent his head forward to start kissing Kurt’s lower abdomen. “I’m fine.”

“Clearly parts of you are fine,” Kurt said, shaking his head as he watched Blaine but couldn’t pull himself away. To be touched like that was something Kurt didn’t know he needed until it happened, and it felt like his body was being magnetized to Blaine’s. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t…” Blaine whispered, his breath warm against Kurt’s belly which made shivers catapult up his spine. “... Don’t leave me to ache here. I want to be with you again Kurt… I want to make you feel good and want you to make me feel good. Let me show you how healthy I am. Please.”

It was the final ‘please’ that shattered all semblance of Kurt’s resolve, spoken with just a touch of whimper mixed with Blaine’s heavy breaths. Kurt’s fingers found themselves winding themselves into Blaine’s curls, and his body leaned forward into the sweet kisses still being spread below his navel as his cock rose up to greet the underside of Blaine’s jaw.

“...Okay.”

  
  



	42. Chapter 39: Elucidate

_** ** _

_**“The sun was shining on the sea,** _

_**Shining with all his might:** _

_**He did his very best to make** _

_**The billows smooth and bright--** _

_**And this was odd, because it was** _

_**The middle of the night.”** _

_**-Lewis Carroll** _

 

Blaine felt like he could come just from the taste of Kurt’s velvet soft skin against his lips. It had been so long since he had done anything even remotely sexually stimulating and the frustration of being so close to Kurt but not being able to be alone with him for so long was aggravating. Then of course they had come to their new home, and Kurt was apparently so worried about hurting Blaine that he kept pushing him away each time he pushed forward. He would be lying if he said that it didn’t tear at his heart everytime Kurt had done it, but considering Kurt’s perspective, he could understand. If their roles were reversed, he certainly wouldn’t want to risk doing anything that might hurt Kurt after all.

Though with all the blood rushing to his cock, he was beyond thinking about risks, especially those that might apply to him.

He drew his lips down, running them like a feather over the trail from Kurt’s navel down as he drew his head in towards his neck to properly greet the pink tipped cock that had knocked on his chin to announce its arrival and listened to the guttural groan that came out of the man that owned the appendage he wrapped his lips around it. Kurt’s fingers tugged on Blaine’s hair and his body arched forward as Kurt thrust himself further into Blaine’s mouth, leaving little room for Blaine to breath or do much else other than accept the weight on his tongue. Blaine had long ago figured out how to suppress his reflex to gag, and so when the head of Kurt’s cock rutted up against Blaine’s adenoids, he breathed in through his nose, hollowed out his cheeks, and let his muscle memory guide him.  

Blaine had done this so many time before throughout their years together, and had committed so much to memory that he didn’t even have to think about what to do next. He could instead focus on the piquant flavor of man in his mouth, the way the end of his nose was tickled by the hairs near the base of Kurt’s penis, and the deeply masculine scent that emanated from Kurt in that part of his body. The more Blaine breathed in that aroma, the more he felt his own cock straining to come out of its skin. His hands slid up the sides of Kurt’s legs until they finally settled on his hips, pulling him further into his mouth, hungry for more.

Kurt was a man of few words when he was aroused, instead communicating by a symphony of moans, grunts, whimpers, and whines. When he did speak it was to direct, and, as he had so many other times before, he broke off his current low wail to look down at Blaine and make his needs known with panting breaths.

“If we’re doing this… you need to lay back on the bed… and let me know if you hurt.”

Blaine lifted his eyes up to look at his husband as he continued to accept the cock being thrust in and out of his mouth. It was with his eyes, veiled by his lashes, that he showed Kurt he understood. More than that, he was grateful Kurt was taking charge because he could barely think with the foggy cloud of desire settled on top of his brain. Kurt let their eyes linger on one another for that moment before his head tipped back and another euphoric stricken groan was drawn from him as Blaine let the curl of his tongue massage the underside of Kurt's dick, making sure each and every vein was just where he had left it.

Kurt sucked in a sharp breath after that, his head tipping forwards again as he withdrew himself from Blaine's mouth, though Blaine made attempt to follow. "Undress yourself and lay back...  I need to go... I need to get something."

Blaine nodded, closing his lips back together. They felt empty without anything pushed between them, without Kurt's flesh to stretch them apart. Still, as Kurt scurried out of the room rather frantically, Blaine worked to untie and loosen the leather binding that fastened his shirt together so he could wriggle himself out of it and set it by the bed. His pants followed, though he had to pause when he heard clattering and swearing coming from the kitchen before a triumphant Kurt yelled "Aha!" and returned to Blaine's sight in the doorway.  

"Lay back," Kurt once again insisted as Blaine shucked his pants off to the ground, blue eyes lingering on Blaine's crotch where his own dick was at attention.  

Of course Blaine listened, scooting backwards on the bed as Kurt stepped up towards it. He had a vial of something unmarked, and Blaine correctly assumed its purpose inwardly as Kurt uncorked the item and doused his fingers in the liquid.  

"I've wanted you so badly..." Blaine uttered breathlessly, watching as Kurt propped a leg up on the bed to stretch his pelvis out and reached behind him.  Blaine couldn't see the finger being plunged up inside him, but he could hear the slick sound of lubricated skin being buried, and watch Kurt's cheeks grow more rosy while his eyes glazed over. He could count on one hand the number of times Kurt had prepared himself since Blaine was always there and eager to provide that to Kurt. Each time Kurt had been impatient, not wanting to wait for Blaine - who took his time to make sure Kurt was ready (aside from their initial hook-up), and each time Blaine was sure that Kurt couldn't get more gorgeous than he was in that position. There was something about your lover preparing to take you that was intensely erotic and simultaneously heart warming.  

What was made it even better was the bob of Kurt's adam's apple whenever he pushed another finger up inside of himself, coupled with the kittenish whimpers of a man who few had ever dared to cross. Only Blaine had ever been able to see that, and it was his eyes alone that would get to revel in it.

"Okay..." Kurt heaved out in a breath, crawling up the bed as he withdrew his fingers and straddled himself over Blaine, feet to each side of Blaine’s hips and knees bent. "If it hurts -"

"I'll tell you," Blaine finished off, hips already rolling upwards as they sought out Kurt. "Please... just... please."

Their deep breathing filled up the room as Kurt lowered himself down, and then shuddered overtop of Blaine with a groan as he enveloped Blaine's head in the tight ring of muscle. Once he had sunk past that barrier, Kurt's groan rolled into a gasp as dropped down so that his ass rested gingerly on top of Blaine's crotch. Moaning as he watched his cock get swallowed up, Blaine couldn't keep his eyes off Kurt, whose own dick bounced against his abdomen with a pre-cum glistened tip. His chest lightened with relief, as did his brain, though the latter was already feeling light with all the blood being drawn southward.

"Angel."

Kurt didn't acknowledge the term of endearment, focused on lifting himself just enough to keep the head of Blaine's cock buried before letting his hips fall again, and so Blaine let his head fall back on the pillow, screwing his eyes shut as he let the euphoria fill him entirely. It was in that way he could tune all his senses to the increasing up and down movements of Kurt on top of him, the way his ass sucked him up so thirstily, and how tight and warm Kurt was inside. Blaine couldn't help but shiver at the sensation, and knew that he wasn't in any position to last long.

"My angel."

Kurt's pace quickened once his body became used to the stretch inside him, and Blaine listened to the heaving interspaced with little whimpers. No other man got to hear this. No other man knew Kurt as Blaine did when he let his walls down. It wasn't just the sex Blaine had wanted, it was also the way Kurt changed when he was lost in the moment. So committed, and lost, and just completely focused on pleasure for that time.

"Blaine."

With his name drawing his attention, Blaine opened his eyes halfway and watched his husband bouncing up and down over him, one hand tugging on his inflamed cock. His name had been his warning. Kurt was clearly just as pent up as he was, and it allowed Blaine permission to bring his hands up to Kurt's hips and hold Kurt in place on him as he came with a wrenched out moan.  Within nanoseconds, Kurt had joined him with a gasp that echoed through the room, and Blaine felt his stomach become splattered with semen.

Kurt let himself still on top of Blaine, hunching forward and panting softly even as Blaine lifted his hands from Kurt's hips and reached to pull Kurt down on top of him by his ribs. Clearly too fuzzy-headed to argue putting his weight on Blaine, Kurt allowed it to happen, and so Blaine wrapped his arms around his husband and held him there as they let their lungs caught up with their breathing.

"See? I'm okay. More than okay actually," Blaine finally murmured once he trusted himself to speak without stuttering.

"Yeah... yeah..." Kurt weakly uttered back before arching his hips up to expel Blaine from within him with a groan and a grimace. "... let me up so I can get something to wipe us off?"

"Only if you promise to come back into my arms."

Kurt smirked as he looked to Blaine, and Blaine released his hold on Kurt who could have burst free anytime he wanted anyhow. A towel was collected, and after wiping himself down, Kurt wiped Blaine off as well before tossing the towel towards the doorway and returning to Blaine, where he promptly slung an arm over him and pressed his body against Blaine's side.  

Blaine didn't remember being tired at that point, but he did remember Kurt falling asleep as his slow breathing became wheezy and his body went lax. It was the first time since they had come to this house that Kurt had actively cuddled Blaine in his sleep, and so when Blaine dozed off, it was the most soundly he had slept in months.

After that, whatever barrier Kurt had mentally put up against them having sex seemed to have disintegrated. They kissed so long and for so hard that Blaine’s lips became chapped and dry. Every moment was an opportunity to make out. In the morning (despite Kurt’s grumblings about morning breath), as they prepared their breakfast in the kitchen, when they were sitting around reading on the couch, when they went to bed together, and everywhere else they could fit it in. Blaine’s lips were constantly drawn to Kurt’s, and Kurt never fought them off.

Then, of course, there was the issue of his dick being tender. Their kissing led to other things, and other things included him being buried up inside of Kurt. Bit by bit, each part of the house was christened, and Blaine could now daydream about how they had collapsed into one another in the kitchen until Kurt was holding onto the counter edge’s to give himself momentum as he bounced up and down on top of Blaine, or when they had barely gotten inside the front door and Blaine had shown Kurt just how much of his strength he had regained by holding him against said door and having his way with him right there.

Then there was his ass, which had been laid claim to so frequently that it hurt for him to sit. Kurt had woken him up in the best way possible one night, prepping him before he took him, though Blaine was particularly fond of the time that Kurt got just a little bit aggressive after they had been making out in the living room and yanked Blaine’s pants down to his knees and bent him over the arm of the couch. He hadn’t even bothered to do more than pull his own trousers down far enough to expose himself before he laid claim to Blaine. That moment had been particularly hot.

It was the honeymoon they never had following the wedding they never made vows at. Together they made up for all the months they had been apart, and Blaine spent most nights mentally ranking his favorite sexual escapades and dodging Kurt’s questions about why he had such a stupid grin on his face.  

Blaine became accustomed to drinking tea all the time after about another month, though he still marvelled at the freedom of water use the Others had. Bathing was a daily event, fresh water was used for each boil of food, there were fountains in the town, and, of course, those common baths that he couldn’t help but stare at every time they went by. Kurt always kept his reddening face turned away from them, but Blaine couldn’t help but lock on to the perfectly sculpted bodies that Others seemed to have. Not a scar, a blemish, or disfigurement among them. If they weren’t moving and talking as they washed, Blaine would have been certain they were all just mannequins.

Old habits died off slowly, and Kurt had to remind Blaine that there was no reason for him to fill bottles and bowls with water just in case they were suddenly without that precious resource. The Others had mastered the ability to rid the ocean water of its salt, and since they were under the water, there really was no reason they should be worried over losing it.

The Halflings continued to visit him whenever Kurt practiced his archery, and Blaine had to hesitantly admit that he was making friends with some of them. There was one girl in particular who seemed to always position herself as close to Blaine as possible and made regular allusions to how Blaine resembled her father. She had beautiful mediterranean features, complete with ebony hair that curled into ringlets, and when she spoke it was with an accent that sounded vaguely Italian. To go along with her fine features, she had an equally fine name - Aradia, and Blaine purposely said it whenever he addressed her just because he enjoyed the way it slipped over his tongue.

But while some Halflings seemed to like Blaine, there were others that did not. Particularly Kurt’s friend Midhir. That damnable ginger haired bog-trotter was always inviting them out for tea at the tea house after Kurt’s practices, and Kurt always accepted on their behalf - even though they had a wealth of tea in their home. Blaine had to sit there and listen to Midhir talk to Kurt and Kurt alone, never paying Blaine any attention as he discussed politics and magical ideas that Blaine couldn’t understand. Kurt was insistent that Midhir was only a friend, but Blaine was sure that Midhir wanted more than that, and that Blaine was just a thorn in his side, which became especially apparent whenever Midhir brought up the idea that Kurt would live so much longer than Blaine. A concept that made Blaine’s stomach tie up in knots. On one hand he was glad that he wouldn’t have to be the one to outlive Kurt, but on the other hand he hated the idea of Kurt being without him.

Perhaps it was selfishness.

Kurt had just shook his head to Midhir each time he mentioned it, and insisted that no, he didn’t need to worry about what would happen then, and no, he didn’t think about the future much. Midhir seemed confused by that, but Blaine understood. When you spent such a large chunk of your life living day to day and savoring what you had in the moment, you didn’t focus too much on the future. That was the essence of being a human in the time after The Tides.

Kurt went home with Blaine though, and even though Blaine had caught Midhir scowling his way whenever they walked away, Blaine took it a step further and would wrap an arm around Kurt’s waist or take Kurt’s hand in his own as one final jab. Midhir might want Kurt, but as long as Blaine was alive, he wasn’t going to let it happen.

 

* * *

 

“You should sire a child,” Aradia said to Blaine on one afternoon. They had been idly watching Kurt snap arrow after arrow out of his bow before Blaine had laid on the grass and stared up at the blue sky above, trying to see if he could see past the illusion and see the ocean above it. It still blew his mind that they were on land… but under the water.

“Kurt and I aren’t capable of reproducing together, Aradia,” Blaine uttered passively. He understood there was some kind of obsession with reproduction in Other culture, but since it had never been an issue up top, he wasn’t going to indulge it down below.

“Oh that’s not what I meant. I mean separately. Siring children is hardly a romantic thing here like it is with humans. Kurt’s grandfather has sired many children, both Pureblood and Halfling, and his true relationships have always been homosexual.”

“Ugh…” Blaine uttered, trying to envision doing things… with a girl. “No offense, Aradia. I like you as a friend… but girl parts… I wouldn’t be able to do anything with it.”

“Hmmm... that’s too bad… you’d make cute children.”

Blaine chuckled and turned his head her way. “Thanks, Aradia.”

Practice continued, and on cue at the end of it, Midhir approached Kurt from where he had been standing on the sidelines and suggested tea. However, Kurt didn’t seem to be looking at Midhir when he spoke, eyes locked on something… or someone else instead.

He watched as a woman, taller than Kurt, but with hair a perfect match to his chestnut, approach him on the field. Kurt had set down his bow and stepped towards her, sharing quiet words and offering her one of his rare smiles. Midhir walked away at that point, and Blaine knew that whomever that woman was, that he liked her if only because she managed to dissuade that red haired bastard from forcing him to another damned tea party.

The woman, who looked like she could be Kurt’s sister, embraced Kurt after he spoke to her, and Blaine smirked as Kurt withdrew from the public display of affection as quickly as he could. Some things never changed.

“I think this means practice is done for the day,” Blaine noted to Aradia, who nodded back to him as she took her leave. He stood up and approached Kurt and the woman slowly, extending a hand when he came close.

“Blaine… Nice to meet you.”

The woman turned and looked at Blaine, who always felt so damned short around Others. He could now appreciate how dwarfs felt in human society. Her eyes were Kurt’s - both stormy and calm all at once, the color of water, and Kurt also shared her angular features and sharp lines. She extended her own hand to shake Blaine’s hand, and offered him a smile. “Nice to see you again… without all the damage and in proper attire.”

Blaine tilted his head to the side and glanced Kurt’s way who was mouthing, “I’ll explain later,” before releasing her hand and gesturing to the house. “Can we have you over for tea...?”

“Elizabeth. Of course.”  

It was Kurt’s mother, and Kurt’s mother was delightful. Blaine kept seeing glimpses of Kurt with her - though more jubilant and talkative. She discussed how she had been called upon to see if there was a reason Blaine couldn’t be killed, the ones trying to commit the act suggesting it had something to do with his injuries. She had realized once she couldn’t heal him though that there was a barrier on him, and with only a handful of individuals who had magic that dealt with being able to create barriers, and with Blaine being human, she connected the dots and correctly assumed that the broken up man before her was Kurt’s lover.

After that she contacted her father to let him know, and her father had alerted Kurt and had Blaine transferred to the ocean city.

“... and of course we’re all very excited that Kurt has successfully sired a child too.”

That’s what it ended on, and it took a second for her words to reach Blaine’s mind as everything seemed to go in slow motion at that point. Kurt groaned and bowed his head down, muttering a, “He doesn’t know” to Elizabeth that Blaine could easily hear. Blaine could feel the weight of his chin as his mouth dropped and stayed open, looking back and forth between Elizabeth and Kurt as they exchanged glances.  

“Well. There were six females that were impregnated…”  Elizabeth said, making Kurt sink further into his seat as he kept his eyes off Blaine, whose head suddenly felt like a brick was shoved between his ears, which in turn were buzzing as they processed the sounds coming from Elizabeth.

“... now only about half of Halfling embryos develop into fetuses. Most self-abort in the womb, so we weren’t shocked when the pregnancies began to cease with you being a Quarterling. However, one of the females continued to carry and it’s now five months in. Quite exciting.”

Kurt had… Blaine had to shake his head to even finish his thought. Elizabeth had said six women… Kurt had… with six women…  

“So what does that mean mother? Am I even going to see this child? What’s the point?” Kurt uttered quietly, angrily, from where he was looking down at his tea.

“Of course. The female in question made a deal, much like you did. The irony is that she doesn’t even want children. She just wants to be with the Halfling woman she loves, who is only on top half the year. In exchange for carrying your child, her Halfling mate will be permitted to stay up top all year long.”

Kurt didn’t respond to that, just continued to look into his cup, leaving Blaine to clutch each side of his head, supporting it between them as he set his elbows on the table. His lips hadn’t reconnected still, and his eyes felt like they wanted to tear up but were too dried out from staring at the table to be able to do it.

“I thought you would both be happier at the news,” Elizabeth spoke up as silence drowned out the room for a minute. “I mean, you can have a real family now.”

“I hadn’t told Blaine yet mother…” Kurt again reiterated, barely a whisper.

She huffed at that and looked Blaine’s way, though his eyes were glued to the table, pupils following the marbled patterning in the wood. “He did it to save you.”

Blaine lifted his head up just a little, looking Elizabeth’s way but still unable to find it within him to speak. “It was the deal to bring you down here.”

“But… why…?” Blaine choked out, eyes moving to Kurt, willing him to say something, anything.

“It wasn’t even a choice…” Kurt spit out. “... Fuck. They even watched me jerk off into a cup.”

Elizabeth seemed to find that amusing, emitting a snicker, which Kurt scowled at in response, but Blaine… Blaine breathed out in relief. “You didn’t have sex with six girls…”

That made Kurt lift his head, eyeing Blaine incredulously. “Fuck. No.”

Another deep breath in and a deep breath out. Blood and oxygen began to flow back into his brain and speed up the process of thinking. Kurt had done it to save him. He hadn’t been with a wealth of women while they had been separated. Kurt had made some kind of a deal, albeit a weird one, to bring Blaine to him and now there was a little Kurt growing in the womb of a human woman somewhere.

Kurt was expecting a child.

THEY were expecting a child.

“Oh god… Kurt… we’ll be dads.”

“And I get to be the first Halfling to be a grandmother,” Elizabeth said proudly with a wide grin - though with her features she looked more like a sibling to Kurt and less a mother, much less a grandmother.

“Yeah…” Kurt said softly, turning the cup between his fingers back and forth, back and forth.

“Kurt,” Blaine reached over and set a hand on top of Kurt’s arm, prompting his husband to look up at him. “You can be a dad... “

“I know,” was the sighed out response. “I just never expected to be.”

“Me neither, but… I mean… we can be now,” Blaine uttered, images of Kurt holding everyone else’s children in his hands but never one of his own flooding his mind from his memories. He looked back to Elizabeth then. “He’s so good with babies… they love him.”

“What’s not to love?” she responded, as any mother might, smile still woven over his face.

“Even the colicy ones. People would bring their crying babies to him and he could always settle them down without any problem.”

“Because they felt safe and secure with him,” Elizabeth noted plainly, glancing towards her son who looked even more uncomfortable than Blaine knew was possible. No doubt due to being the focus of the conversation. “It’s a major part of his magic after all.”

“Have they found out if it’s a boy or a girl? Is it healthy? When’s the due date?” Blaine rattled off, the anxiety that he had carried falling away as excitement grew within him.

“The sex is not generally a concern for our kind, so it’s not checked. It is healthy, and the woman is regularly attended to to ensure the pregnancy is going well since it is such a special child, and it will be a spring baby. Probably right around Kurt’s own birthday,” Elizabeth answered, clearly having kept herself up to date on the status of her grandchild-to-be.

Blaine squirmed in his seat, reaching over with one of his hands to take Kurt’s, who still looked unsettled. “Kurt…“

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know how…”

Blaine half frowned and half smiled, shaking his head just a little as he tried to consider why it would have been difficult for Kurt to admit what he had done. If that was the deal, then it was a good deal. Not only did it have them together again, but it meant they could have what was always out of reach before. Blaine would have done it to save Kurt, without hesitation. “It’s okay…”

“It’s not… but… whatever.”

“You two should come up with names. Names are a very important part of our society. It’s why Kurt has my name for a middle name, and why his own name is so close to his father’s. Names carry their own kind of magic, and their own strengths and weaknesses… why were you named Blaine?” Elizabeth said, changing the focus of the conversation off of Kurt and back to the baby.

“It’s from my mother’s side of the family. Her mother, my grandmother, had the surname Blaine. There’s a colonel who served with George Washington and a speaker for the house of representatives…” It had been a long time since Blaine had explained his namesake, but it came to him quickly. Back in his school days, he had to explain why he had such an odd name all the time to his peers. He remembered wishing his name were something more plain like Elliott or Adam, if only to avoid having to answer those questions. Now, whenever Kurt said his name, it made him glad to have it.

“Very strong,” Elizabeth nodded thoughtfully. “I expect nothing less than a strong name for my grandchild as well.”

“Kurt Junior?” Blaine suggested, a playful smile tugging up the corners of his mouth.

“No.” Kurt snapped his head up, looking downright aghast. “Absolutely not. That’s ridiculous.”

Blaine chuckled, and Elizabeth joined in once she realized that Blaine had been joking. “Well. I can provide books about names and naming… and I’ve already begun knitting boots and outfits.”

“Others knit?” Blaine asked, head tipped to the side. It was nothing he had ever seen one of them do, and certainly something he had never considered.

“If they’ve been taught. My own mother taught me when I was growing up… I knitted and sewed most of Kurt’s clothing when he was a baby,” she said, her eyes giving away that she was only half in the moment - the other half reflecting on memories on what was no doubt a smaller version of Kurt, dolled up in clothing of her own making.

“Great. You both have baby fever…” Kurt grunted, shoving his chair away from the table with a squeak and ducking into the kitchen to boil more water for tea.  Despite his hard exterior, Blaine could see in the way Kurt’s fingers slid over the countertop and how he swayed his hips back and forth that he was just as excited, if not more. He’d never admit it though.  

“I do have to admit some concern though Blaine… especially since you were going to attack our outpost up top,” Elizabeth said, voice suddenly flat as she changed the topic and looked at him accusingly. “I mean… I can appreciate that our kind took away your own family, but you’ll have to put that behind you if you’re going to be the parent of a child that carries magic within them.”

Blaine’s brows bunched together, and he remembered snippets of conversation from months earlier. Sebastian had told them, the Others, that he was a renegade. That’s why they had intended to execute him originally. As he opened his mouth to explain though, Kurt snapped in, returning with a fresh kettle of water. “He did no such thing. That was a ruse.”

“How? Why?” Elizabeth queried as she silently accepted the refill of her cup.

“The men who caught me… we knew them years ago… they tried to kill Kurt and tried to take over the community we came from,” Blaine explained, purposely leaving out the background information about him having once been a part of their group before they divided for the sake of simplicity. “Kurt fought them off and it was decided that they would be essentially exiled… ridden out as far as they could and then left.”

“But… they caught you…?”

Blaine nodded. “I was on my way to the coast… to find Kurt… and I went into that town of theirs, not knowing they were in it, much less in charge, and they locked me up, beat me up, and then handed me off to the Others that came by.”

Elizabeth worried her lower lip between her teeth, looking to the table top thoughtfully before asking for clarification. “They tried to kill Kurt?”

“They would have had it not been for the memory or whatever you planted in me…” Kurt grumbled, his own eyes cast down into his cup.

“A part of my ability… much like you protected Blaine with yours. You would have died then… had it not been for that?”

Kurt nodded solemnly, lifting up his cup to sip the caramel like liquid. Whatever flavor Kurt had picked out for this fresh pot was sweeter than the last, and Blaine definitely liked it.  

“... and they deceived us…”

Kurt and Blaine both nodded at that, and Elizabeth took in a heavy breath which she exhaled just as deeply. “This complicates matters.”

“How?”

“We’ve been, well, rather the council has opted to pull back for the past few years. Others still maintain presence at major waterways and coasts, but otherwise we’ve been trying to work with humans instead of against them…”

“That doesn’t change things,” Kurt huffed. “They don’t represent all the humans.”

“No. But that particular outpost was considered progressive... and they’ve given us so many renegades… and now…”

Blaine frowned. “Now you don’t know if those individuals were executed for the reasons you intended.” He didn’t say the right reasons, because whether or not they were renegades didn’t make executing them any more acceptable in Blaine’s mind.  

“Right…“ Another sigh and Kurt’s mother stood up. “You’ll have to excuse me… I need to let the council know about this. It can’t continue... “  

Blaine watched as she set her eyes on Kurt then, eyes frowning along with her lips. If he had to guess, he’d have to say what upset her the most was that they had been trusting humans that had tried to hurt her son - and Blaine couldn’t really blame her for her prioritization. Now that he had the thought of having a child in the forefront of his mind, he knew he would do whatever he could to protect the little one in whatever way he could.

Kurt saw her to the door and then leaned in the doorway to the dining room, looking Blaine’s way. “I am sorry.”

“I know.”

“I should have told you.”

“You should have.”

“I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

Blaine didn’t respond with words to that line, just a roll of his eyes as he abandoned his cup and stood up to walk over to Kurt. “You have been ready for this since before I came around.”

“Taking care of someone else’s kid isn’t the same as taking care of your own.”

Blaine took one of Kurt’s hands in his own, brushing his thumb over the backs of his fingers as he led Kurt to the couch where he sat down and Kurt followed. “You won’t know that until he or she is here.”

“Kurt Junior is absolutely out of the question.”

Blaine laughed once again and grabbed the book at the side of the couch. “Well at least we already have stories for the baby.”

“What are you talking about?” Kurt questioned as he took the book from Blaine’s hands. “This is some crazy book Mab gave me to train me. It’s just full of nonsense and nothing.”

Blaine shook his head to that. “No it’s not… I was reading it when you were in the tub this morning. It’s stories for kids.”

Kurt flipped open to a random page, looking it over, his eyes straining as he focused on the words and once again shook his head. “No it’s not.”

Blaine leaned over then, looking at the words, so clearly a tale about a rabbit leading a little girl into a world of fantasy. “Yeah… I mean, the story is a little whimsical… but it makes sense in its own way.”

“Read it to me,” Kurt snapped, shoving the book Blaine’s way who went wide eyed in surprise but looked down at the page and began to read aloud.

_“Alice came to a fork in the road. 'Which road do I take?' she asked._   
_'Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire Cat._   
_'I don't know,' Alice answered._   
_'Then,' said the Cat, 'it doesn't matter.”_

“Huh…” Kurt muttered, head tilting back over the edge of the couch after letting his eyes follow along with Blaine’s. “Weird.”

“Yeah. The cat’s pretty creepy,” Blaine admitted, snapping the book shut and putting it back on the table to the side of the couch. “But it’s a fun little story. Full of imagination and nonsense.”

“Well, the nonsense part we can agree on at least.”

  
  



	43. Chapter 40: Sinking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Sabby for editing this monstrosity. I couldn't do it without her. Also check out chapters 12 and 15 because there's new art from freakingpotter and crazie-crissie that I embedded into those chapters that is positively amazing!

** **

**“Come gather 'round people**   
**Wherever you roam**   
**And admit that the waters**   
**Around you have grown**   
**And accept it that soon**   
**You'll be drenched to the bone**   
**If your time to you**   
**Is worth savin'**   
**Then you better start swimmin'**   
**Or you'll sink like a stone**   
**For the times they are a-changin'.”**

**-Bob Dylan**

Kurt couldn’t get himself out of bed, and not because he was sore from shooting off arrows for several hours in a row the day before (though he was), or because he felt nauseous from the meal Blaine had tried to make him the night before (despite Blaine’s best efforts), but because of the tangle of arms and legs woven around him that were attached to a man who Kurt could easily best while conscious. Blaine was uncannily strong when he slept, and it ensured that Kurt stay snared by his warm, furry body even though he was wide awake and had long ago finished counting the tiles on the ceiling.

Still, he hadn’t the heart to wake Blaine up, even with his morning breath cascading over Kurt’s face in regular intervals as he let out his small, squeaky snores. Blaine was easier to manage when he was asleep. Kurt didn’t have to worry about being tackled in a fit of arousal, nor did he have to answer the latest in a series of questions that were baby-related.

Which was the real problem.

If Kurt let his eyes drift away from the ceiling, he’d be forced to look upon the myriad of baby gear, attire, books, and supplies that Blaine and Kurt’s mother had set about collecting. On Blaine’s bedside table, there was a pile of books and sketched in notepads regarding names, some crossed off and others underlined as Blaine had concentrated his efforts on what he called “helping Kurt find the perfect name” - though aside from answering the questions about whether or not Kurt liked name X or name Y, Kurt really found he wasn’t thinking about the name of the baby.

Nor was he worried about what kind of cloth to use for the baby’s diapers like Blaine was, or that they’d have to find someone to donate breast milk because formula was a definite no-no according to Kurt’s mother. Kurt didn’t find himself frantic over ensuring there was enough blankets and clothing, as his mother had been seeing to that - with an ever growing pile of infant garments settled in their living room as testament to it. Kurt was also not thinking about how they could get their hands on vaccinations for the baby, as Blaine had been, out of worry that the baby might contract some otherwise forgotten human disease since he or she would be so much more human than Other.

No. Kurt hadn’t been focused on any of that, because he had been given no opportunity to be.  With Elizabeth and Blaine so obsessed over the child, and bombarding him with worries and ideas left, right, and center, Kurt had barely had a moment to reflect on how he felt about any of it. He understood that he had fathered a child indirectly, and that the child would be in his care as soon as it was born. He knew that it was coming, and closer to happening with each passing day - but it still seemed wildly unreal, and with everything that Kurt had gone through in his lifetime, he half expected something to occur that would take the baby out of his life before it was in it.

So Kurt remained detached, despite Blaine’s vocalized concerns that he “seemed disinterested” and his mother’s urgencies about “getting emotionally prepared”. After all, the post-Tides attitude towards all things were to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Since the Tides, Kurt had heard that woman had been lost in childbirth like they had in times past, and had also seen the small grave markers with names that had lived for less than a year. Anything could happen to the little one before it reached him, and Kurt couldn’t allow himself to get emotionally invested in case something did. He knew he’d have to be there to help his mother and husband who already talked about the baby like it was already there and they knew it.

“Do you know what the mother looks like?” Blaine had asked of Elizabeth.

“Dark blonde hair, almost brunette.  I didn’t see what color her eyes were in the scan I had, but she’s a good height and looked quite healthy,” Elizabeth had responded before both her and Blaine had looked Kurt’s way thoughtfully.

“What?”

“Just imagining what the baby might look like when it’s grown.”  Blaine uttered, Elizabeth nodding in agreement.

Kurt just rolled his eyes and turned his attentions back to trying to figure out that damned book. How Blaine could see tales of fantasy in it was beyond him still, and Kurt had even had Elizabeth read it and she had recited the procedure for a colon cleansing from the page he had held out to her. For him however, it was still disjointed nonsense.

Often he’d see the words strength and balance repeated, but with no context to give them any more meaning than what he already had in his head for definitions. There were also hearts scattered about the text, in much the same way an adolescent girl might doodle in her notebook, but again with nothing to give them any meaning.  

It was all anyone ever talked about around him too. Blaine discussed his ideas about the baby with his magicless Halfling fanclub while Kurt practiced and Midhir pushed Kurt to choose a name, insisting on one with two syllables which apparently made some kind of difference. Even Mab, who finally showed up at their door one afternoon, greeted Kurt by means of saying that she had heard about his happy news and that the whole town was excited to have a baby among them - apparently quite a rare thing.  

“Why can Blaine read stories in this damned book and my mom reads it like a medical textbook?” Kurt demanded when Mab asked for the book back.

“It tells you what you need to know… and for humans it gives them an insight into magic since they cannot wield it,” Mab said plainly, accepting the book into her hands and flipping it open.  “For me it speaks about soothing and calm… and my magic is based around manipulating emotion to a gentler state… balancing out hormones is what a human doctor would call it.”

“... and my mother is a healer… so it tells her about healing…” Kurt said softly as he looked down at the page in front of Mab. “It still doesn’t tell me how to use my abilities.”

“Because you think of using them like a human uses a tool, but it is not a tool, it is a part of you. There are no instructions for one that will work the same for another. Like we are all constantly told, Other or human, we are each unique, and how we summon and control our abilities must be, too,” she huffed, seemingly affronted by Kurt’s admission.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t teach me,” Kurt offered.

“You should not be. You are too stubborn to teach.”

 

* * *

 

“There has to be something I could offer in terms of skill around here.”

It had become their argument of choice lately - how to occupy their existence in this world. Kurt was content to just enjoy their time together, even if it was absolutely mind numbing at the best of times, but Blaine was getting more and more insistent that he needed to be doing something to contribute in order to feel like he had a purpose.

“You can’t. Everything here is magic.”

“But there are Halflings without magic who have jobs around here…”

“But you’re a human.”

“Which just means I’m a shorter, magicless Halfling with round ears. Honestly Kurt - what can they do that I can’t?”

Kurt wasn’t able to answer that, and really had no real reason to keep Blaine at home other than that he worried. He worried someone else would find a reason to scar his husband. He worried that without Kurt around, someone might try to do something to Blaine. He worried that someone would say something insulting to Blaine. He worried.

“You’ll have your hands full when the baby comes.”

“You say that like it doesn’t have two parents.”

“Well considering how special everyone is making the baby out to be, maybe it will need two full time parents.”

“Kurt…”

Blaine’s warning voice. The voice that meant Kurt was pushing too far. The voice that meant Blaine was done with the conversation because he presumed Kurt was being unreasonable in some way.

It was hardly the first time Kurt had heard it.

“Damn it, Blaine. I just want to enjoy not having to work all the damned time. I want to enjoy the fact that, against all odds, you’re in my life and alive, and, damn it, that somehow we’re going to have a kid of our own even though we shouldn’t be.”

That was when Kurt got THAT look. The one where Blaine lifted his eyebrows just slightly and his eyes twinkled. The one where the corner of Blaine’s mouth twitched up on the left side for just a nanosecond before his lips flattened out.  

The one where Blaine figured he knew something that Kurt didn’t.

“One or both of us having some kind of job doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy that Kurt… if anything, it’ll let us enjoy it all the more because it’ll give us something to look forward to after we’ve finished working. Don’t let our home life become the job because that’s when it can become something we’d hate.”

“I can’t use my magic Blaine… or control it at least… the jobs people have here are based around using magic…” Kurt grumbled in reply, turning away from Blaine’s smug looking face to stare out the window.  

“They don’t all have magic though, and they still work… there has to be options.”

“What if someone stabs you in the back again?”

Blaine sighed, and Kurt could almost see his eyes roll in the reflection of the window. “All the weapons here were magically crafted… which means your protection will be on me…”

“I hate that fucking thing on your back…” Kurt snarled, thinking about the unfading red scar. He couldn’t bend Blaine over without a shirt covering it because nothing killed his erection faster than seeing it and remembering how close Blaine came to being killed by someone that Kurt should have killed years ago.

“Honestly… aside from the fact that it hurt when getting it - you have to give them credit for literally stabbing my back to spell out backstabber.”

Kurt didn’t find it funny, scowling at his reflection and crossing his arms over his chest. He hated that they had did that to Blaine, and he hated that he couldn’t take whatever spell he had over Blaine off of him for even a minute so his mother could heal the scars on his back. It was a constant reminder of how Kurt had failed his husband - first by letting Sebastian and his cronies survive, and then by leaving Blaine behind in the community when he should have known Blaine would have tried to find him. Like the dogs Blaine bred, he was nothing short of loyal, and that loyalty was tied to Kurt.

“Look… Kurt… we’re going to end up driving one another crazy if all we do is hang out with one another. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you - far from it in fact… but I just get antsy sitting around all day. I need a purpose. I need to do my part. If this is where we’re going to spend our days, then I need to feel a part of the community rather than separate from it.”

The problem was though, in Kurt’s mind at least, that Blaine would always be separate. He was the only human there. Even the magicless Halflings had an innate ability to speak the language and understand the concepts behind magic. They fit in with their height and their ears. Blaine though… Blaine would always stick out.

“Maybe I can help the Berserkers… I did work as a veterinarian after all…”

Kurt winced. Berserkers could morph into animals, but they weren’t animals, and certainly didn’t need the care animals required. Plus they had a reputation as being temperamental and limited in humor - two things that could get Blaine in serious trouble.

“If I start off slowly, I could do some manual labor too… I was always pretty handy around the community…”

Except they had magical solutions and apparati in this place. Blaine wouldn’t be able to fix anything if he tried, and everything they needed moved was done using magic.

“What about schooling? I certainly am the local specialist in human culture…”

“You need kids to have a school Blaine…” Kurt reminded him, bringing to light the fact that kids were few and far between in this world, such that Kurt had yet to see one. The only reason he knew there was any at all was because he had overheard a Berserker talking about his “pups” back in the forest.

“There would be no adults interested?”

“They go up to the surface when they’re curious. Hell… some of the really old ones probably know human history better than either of us think we do because they actually lived it.”

“Well how about…”

And so it went on and on. Everything Blaine could think of and every reason Kurt could give to shut the ideas down. The more Blaine tried, the more convinced Kurt was that there was nothing for him down there.

Or for himself for that matter.

All that Kurt had was Blaine, and though there was the promise of a child, Kurt wasn’t sure it would actually make it into his arms, and so he was willing to do and say anything to ensure that Blaine stayed with him, because Kurt was certain he couldn’t lose Blaine again.

Twice was enough.

 

* * *

 

“Your grandfather is going to the surface.”

Kurt responded with a noncommittal hum of acknowledgement. Why his mother thought he would be concerned about that information was beyond him, but she seemed to believe that Finavar’s comings and goings were of interest to Kurt so she gave him regular details on it.

“There’s a gathering of Purebloods who want to make this peace last and representatives of human colonies that live along the west side of the Pacific Ocean.”

Again Kurt made a small grunt to verify that he was, indeed, taking in Elizabeth’s words - though he was trying to figure out the baby sling Blaine had procured from a vendor in the town. Despite his best efforts though, he kept knotting it around his chest.

“Of particular interest to your grandfather is seeing how they determine who they submit to us as threats….”

Kurt’s eyes lifted off the brightly colored fabric binding his ribs over his clothing, and from there they set upon Elizabeth, looking back at him patiently. The dots connected in his mind and he looked towards the window where, just outside, Blaine was showing some of his magicless Halfling friends how to make arrows, a skill he had become considerably better at in the years he had been with Kurt. “You think they’ll admit to committing inhumane acts?”

“No, but we now know from both you and Blaine that the ones from the settlement Blaine was captured at were acting in self-interest and spite. An example will be set.”

Kurt glanced back towards Elizabeth. First towards her fingers, nimbly knitting yet another little hat for a baby to wear, and then up at her eyes which mirrored Kurt’s perfectly. “You think that will really help the peace?”

“No. Nor do I think any of the Purebloods would have cared if it was just a case of mistreating their fellow humans.”

Kurt looked down at his lap, shaking his head slowly. “They’re more upset about Sebastian trying to kill me.”

“The old saying… Blood is thicker than water? Water fuels our magic, but blood is what makes it. You are rare Kurt - you know that…”

Kurt drew out a long sigh, the fabric tied around him limiting how much air he could take back in. It wasn’t right that his life was considered more valuable than Blaine’s - but to convince them of that seemed impossible. “It won’t help the peace they want to achieve.”

“I thought you would be happy to hear about those individuals getting their dues.”

Kurt pursed his lips, sliding them sideways into a crooked line. “I would rather be the one giving them their dues.”

“That’s my boy.”

 

* * *

 

“Should we put the crib at the end of our bed or beside one of the walls? Do you think there’s a difference? I read babies can identify their parents by their smells. What if it prefers one of our smells to the others and we put the crib on the wrong side of the bed and MPPHFF!”

Kurt had been trying to sleep, staring up at the ceiling which was now decorated with dabs of little glowing colors that kind of resembled a rainbow of stars overhead. Apparently it was to make the room more soothing, but soothing was hard to come by when one’s husband never shut up about the baby that was getting closer and closer to becoming a reality, and the only way Kurt could think to shut Blaine up was to cover his mouth with his own.

“Kurt…!” Blaine gasped out when he had used up all his oxygen and needed to breath, pulling back just a bit from Blaine’s lips as his body reacted, as it always seemed to, to the press of Blaine’s flesh against his own.  

“Less talk,” was the breath-heavy response out of Kurt, whose eyes flickered over Blaine’s face, rapidly hungered with desire for the man he had rolled upon to connect lips with.

Blaine, thankfully, didn’t argue, instead reaching down to peel away the underwear that Kurt was wearing - the only thing he wore at night. The constant temperature in the city below the sea required no layers for sleeping comfort. It certainly made getting down to business easier when they didn’t need to rip off several layers of leather and cotton to find one another, and sex was more for the pleasure than another means to keep warm.

“Guh… do you want… or me… or… OH… there…” Blaine stammered as Kurt rid him of his own underwear, tossing it to the floor, probably on top of some baby clothing that had overtaken the floor, and crawled backwards on his hands and knees to drop his head over Blaine’s wonderfully heavy cock, which he curled his lips and tongue around snugly.  

Blaine’s hands reached down, setting themselves gently on Kurt’s hair and moving with the bob of his head, up and down, and twisting around to ensure each inch of skin was run over with the flat of his tongue. Instead of talk, Kurt got what he wanted - slow, gasping breaths and shuddering moans as Blaine arched his back up, losing his ability to think and speak coherently as Kurt focused his energy on finding the cure for sleeplessness inside of Blaine’s throbbing dick.  

Blaine did try to warn him, whining out his name a couple times before realizing that Kurt wasn’t going to slow down or stop before jerking his hips up on last time and spraying the inside of Kurt’s mouth with his seed. To the best of his ability, Kurt lapped it up, but as he crawled back up the bed and Blaine turned his glassy eyes towards him, Kurt could see in the reflection of Blaine’s eyes that he he had a bit of dribble on the corner of his mouth, a dribble that Blaine reached up to wipe off before leaning over to sweetly put his lips against Kurt’s before laying back. “I love you.”

The corner of Kurt’s mouth twitched up at that, and he gave Blaine a smile in response before laying his head back on the pillow, taking Blaine’s hand in his own as it reached down to take his cock in hold. “I’m okay. Sleep.”

“You sure?” Blaine murmured, eyes glazing over as he wove their fingers together between their bodies.

“Very. I just watched your toes curl up. You’d be completely useless to me now.”

Blaine chuckled and rolled his head back on his pillow, muttering something about repaying the favor in the morning before dozing off, and for Kurt, sleep came swiftly once there was silence.

 

* * *

 

“We REALLY need to narrow down the names, Kurt. We have a couple weeks left until the due date,” Blaine insisted, pushing the notepad where he had listed off his top ten names for each sex along with the reasons behind them towards Kurt as they sat across from one another at the table one morning.

“Two weeks… already? Really?” There was not nearly enough caffeine in Kurt to handle that information. What he thought he had all the time in the world to put off, and what he thought for sure couldn’t possibly be happening to him was, and soon. “I… don’t know how to pick a name…”

Blaine sighed, his mouth quirking up into a lopsided smile as he looked over Kurt’s face in a way that made Kurt look down at the notes before him to avoid that look of amusement his husband wore. “Just pick the ones that speak to you the most.”

“They’re just names…”

“Is Blaine just a name for you?”

Kurt’s eyes flicked back upwards, his head following as he looked across at his husband. No. Blaine was not just a name. It was a person who meant the world to him. It was a word that meant calm, serenity, and security. It was a promise and a memory. It was the world letting him know that not everything was as terrible and treacherous as he once thought. There was hope, there was peace, and there was love to be found.

His eyes flicked back to the papers set before him and he sighed, flipping the pages, hoping at least one of the names from each list would speak to him as Blaine suggested. All the reasons Blaine had listened below each one were good - the names of heroes and leaders with meanings as bright as their legacies, yet nothing seemed good enough. Not for their child at least.

“I wish it was your child. Not mine.”

“It will be.”

“You know what I mean.”

Blaine’s leg bent under the table, his ankle bumping against Kurt’s. “Why?”

“You have a better temperament… you’re all human… and you have a nicer skin tone…”

Blaine chuckled at that, despite Kurt being quite serious about his reasoning. “The human part I can get. You never felt like you quite fit up in the community… and down here you don’t feel like you fit either… though, if I’m being totally honest angel… that’s more about your attitude than what your genetics dictate.”

“It’s a lot of stress being the fucking Quarterling. They think I’m king shit up on turd mountain because twenty-five percent of my DNA comes from them.”

Again Blaine giggled, forcing Kurt to roll his eyes hard in order to stop himself from laughing along with him. “... and your temperament is probably more from the need to be tough rather than something that’s determined by your genes. As for skin tone… I like your skin.”

“I burn too easily.”

“But you get the most adorable freckles when you do.”

Kurt scowled towards Blaine, who seemed to find the face amusing as he grinned toothily back at Kurt, though one of the teeth on upper side of his mouth was victim to Sebastian’s and his goons, leaving a gap there when Blaine smiled.

Not that it mattered though. Blaine always looked delectable to Kurt.

“I really don’t think I’ve come to terms with… this…” Kurt said as he waved a hand over the notebook.

“Well that much is obvious by the way you stare at the clothing and blankets and everything else your mom and I have found for the baby…” Blaine began, reaching across the table to take Kurt’s hand in his and swipe his thumb gently over Kurt’s. “... You look like you don’t know what it is or how it got there.”

Kurt looked at their joined hands - his pale white skin in Blaine’s naturally tan skin, like caramel and vanilla. There were days even still that he wasn’t sure how to navigate the relationship he had with Blaine, and yet they were bringing a child into the mix. It was scary, and yet, for years before Blaine, it was something he had daydreamed about. How could something so entrenched in his dreams and wishes be so terrifying when it came to life?

“You know you’re going to be the best dad right?”

Kurt looked up to Blaine’s honey eyes, wondering how he could say such a thing with a straight face. There was no way Blaine could know that for sure, and given how sweet Blaine was with the children in the community, there was no way that he could ever hope to be more than second best with Blaine as his husband.

“The kids in our lives have always loved being with you, and you always knew what to do with them to make them happy even when no one else did,” Blaine continued, squeezing Kurt’s hand.

Kurt sighed and looked back down at the table. That was true at least, but now that he knew about his abilities, he had to wonder if it was because of that magic he had, and not because of who he was without it. If he ever lost his magic, would kids still feel the same about him - particularly the kid about to invade his life as his own?

“Start by narrowing down the names... “ Blaine suggested, pointing with his nose towards the lists. “Work your way up to the big decisions.”

Big decisions… as if creating a child wasn’t a big one to begin with.

 

* * *

 

“I wish we had more phones…” Kurt murmured as he slid his fingers over the buttons of the one Blaine had brought with him. They had found a Halfling with magic that could send a charge into electrical objects, allowing them to recharge the phone with visits to him.  

“Maybe we could see if anyone who goes up top could find us some…” Blaine suggested.

They were laying back on the bed, the phone sitting between them as it played music. It was the one thing Kurt was sure of when it came to the baby. He wanted the baby to have music in its life. They told stories of the hopes, dreams, and calamities of a time past, yet still resonated within people regardless of when they were listened to. Music was special, and all too rare up top, and even more so down below.

The time for their baby was drawing close, and any day could bring the arrival of the infant. Kurt’s heart seemed to constantly beat rapidly, worried and anxious and a mess of emotions, while Blaine seemed to be breathless and on high alert - jumping at every little noise and movement.

Earlier in the day, Elizabeth had stopped by, and, in their states, they assumed she was there to tell them the baby had come. However, she was only there to tell them Finavar had gone up top for the meeting she had spoken of earlier - as if it mattered at all to them. Kurt had been short with her then, if only because she had gotten his hopes up only to have them plunge through his body and into his toes.  

“Be nice to your mom. I’m sure we’ll want her to babysit when we get tired of baby.”

Kurt had looked at Blaine then like he was speaking in tongues. Of course his mother would be around, regardless of what Kurt said to her. She was much too excited about her impending grandmahood. On top of which, Kurt wasn’t sure he wanted to let his kid out of his sight even though it hadn’t come into it yet.

Perhaps it was because of the way his chest was already rattling with his heart stomping in it, or because he was already such a bundle of nerves that he felt overstimulated, but Kurt didn’t notice how the bed and room shook until things started falling off the tables and crashing to the floor. Both he and Blaine jumped to their feet, looked at one another, and then opened the curtain to look outside.

“It felt like how Earthquakes are described in books…” Blaine said, mouth snapping shut as another wave passed under them, but also above them. The sky flickered, alternating between the set skyline that was always there and then casting them in darkness as that image failed.

There was another shaking, strong enough that their grip on the windowsill wasn’t enough to keep them in place and they toppled together onto the bed which bounced across the floor of the bedroom with them on it, both trying to find their feet.

It was Kurt who got himself upright first, and then grabbed for Blaine in the dark that had settled over them, pulling him by the hands out of the bedroom, and then out of the building. The once endless daylight had been flooded with darkness, like a TV screen going black after broadcasting, and while there was glows from candles and lights around the town, the shadow that had cast itself over the town and surrounding lands seemed endless and all consuming.

“Kurt… what’s… going on?”

Kurt clutched Blaine’s hands tightly as another rumble rippled underneath them, again forcing them to the ground where Kurt pulled Blaine against him tightly so at least he knew where his husband was as his eyes adjusted to the dark.

“I have no idea.”

They were not the only ones confused though. They could hear screams and wails, and portals flickered open and shut in rapid succession from all around the town as Kurt assumed people were fleeing through them. However, not everyone had access to portals - which had to be connected to someone on the other side to be useful, and so the cries for help continued as the shakes continued at increasingly closer intervals.

“Kurt! Blaine! Where are you?” Elizabeth’s voice cried out from somewhere in the darkness.

“Mom! What’s happening?!” Kurt yelled out blindly, his arms curling around Blaine’s just as his husband was doing to him. A small splatter on his cheek felt like rain, and Kurt shuddered as his memories of heavy rainfall that he had gotten stuck underneath came back to him, but there had never been rain down in this place before. Something was very wrong.

“The conference! They were attacked!” Her voice was closer, and Kurt reached out with one hand from where he and Blaine had sat themselves on the ground. Standing and staying standing was a near impossibility and Kurt didn’t understand how his mother had gotten close to them without falling.

“What do you mean?” Blaine asked, and the pair of them finally were able to find Elizabeth in the pitch black, pulling her into them as more spits of rain trickled upon them.

“It was a trap! Renegades! My dad!” she choked out, holding onto both of them snugly.

“What does that have to do with this…” Blaine asked as the ground rattled below them and the sky above them started hissing like a hose with a leak.

“Finavar… he was the one who made this construct… he made the barrier…” Kurt said, looking up blackness above them and realizing he was looking at the ocean from below as it worked to break down whatever it was that kept them separate from the ocean.  

“Well, can’t someone else put a new one up?!” Blaine demanded, the urgency and panic clear in his tone as his grip tightened around Kurt.

“There’s only a few with the ability to make barriers…” Kurt repeated, forgetting where and from whom he had heard those words, but recalling them none-the-less. “... and the others aren’t as strong or focused with their abilities as Finavar… “

“We’re going to drown…?” Blaine choked out, more a statement than a question, and as Elizabeth let out a cry against them, Kurt couldn’t stop looking up at the dripping darkness over him, wondering how he had let himself get so complacent in the most dangerous of places, and how he had let his beloved come down with him, thinking it would be safe.

 

 


	44. Chapter 41: Surfacing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Sabby for continuing to beta this monstrosity, and all my reviewers who keep me motivated to write. I'll be watching the finale with you all tonight.

** **

**“When you were born, you cried  
** **and the world rejoiced.  
** **Live your life  
** **so that when you die,  
** **the world cries and you rejoice.”**

**Cherokee Proverb**

 

Everything was pitch black aside from the odd flashes of purple off in the distance where Others were making portals to the world above. The ground shook under them while the ocean trembled over them, and Blaine could barely breathe with the way Kurt had him clutched against his chest and how Elizabeth had them both wrapped in her arms so fiercely. Yet, despite the impending sense of the end, Blaine didn’t feel his heart race, nor did he feel the need to cry out and implore whatever god or gods there might be to save them. Instead, he felt calm. He knew he shouldn’t, and he certainly was aware that he should have been panicking, but all the same he felt alright with the knowledge that they were about to die, because, at the very least, he was going to be with Kurt when it happened.

His companions were not as accepting.

Elizabeth was crying, every few seconds stopping her ugly sobs as she apologized to Kurt for bringing him there, lamenting the grandchild she wouldn’t see, and asking the rain filled sky for forgiveness for everything she had done wrong.

Kurt was trying to fix things - as he always did; openly wondering if there was a way to plug the leaks above them that were showering them with ocean water and ignoring Elizabeth’s words in his effort to solve the problem over them.

Each second that passed led to an increase in the intensity of the underwater rain, such that they were now all sitting in a good foot of water where they had stumbled and fell together when the darkness had come over the realm. Oddly enough, the water was as warm as it was salty, and as far as deaths went, Blaine thought, it wasn’t going to be a bad way to go - cocooned in darkness and water, much like a return to the womb. A place he couldn’t remember, yet everyone always seemed to revere as a place of ultimate security.

“Strength… family… care…” Kurt murmured above him, and Blaine looked through the darkness for those grey-blue eyes, wanting to see them one last time before they were taken by the waves.  He couldn't see them though, no matter how hard his eyes tried to adjust to the lack of light, but at least Blaine knew where he ought to be looking by following Kurt’s voice. His husband, so focused on trying to solve the problem of fixing the wall, and likely because of his panic, had a deathgrip on Blaine, one that would leave bruises on his corpse. After a short time though, the fear must have gotten to Kurt, because instead of verbalizing ideas of getting people to climb up and plug the leaks, he began to utter nonsense that seemed to give Kurt some kind of focus, and while Blaine just wanted one last kiss before their demise, Kurt seemed intent on making his last words as plentiful and as scattered as possible - with nothing to do with Blaine or their circumstances.

“I loved your dad so much Kurt…”  
“Power… focus… loyalty…”  
“He was such a good man and you take after him so much…”  
“Protection… safety… security…”  
“He was the only human I ever found love with.”  
“Kin… preserve… devotion…”  
“I wish I would have found you sooner…”  
“Shelter… bastion... “  
“You deserved so much better…”  
“Aegis…”

The shuddering all around them ceased abruptly, and Blaine, whose body had so quickly gotten used to the vibrations, felt nauseous at the feel of solidity, pinching his eyes and lips closed to try and stem off any bile that tried to rise to his mouth. He was still bound against Kurt, but only now with one of Kurt’s arms, the other having left him during the cessation of the quaking. Blaine heard Elizabeth gasp above him, and, tentatively opening one eye, saw that light had returned to the world they were in.

It wasn’t perfect though. The ocean above them could be seen fighting to get in as an odd, orange glow hovered overhead, the dark blue swirls pressing patterns over the glass-like barrier. There were still drops of water squeezing their way through the cracks and down upon them too, wherever the leaks were too large to contain. The screaming that had been the background music to this disaster had broken and there was cheering and shouts of joy. Something had stopped, or at least delayed, the danger above them.

“Kurt… you’re…”

Blaine followed Elizabeth’s voice, looking to his husband who had his freed hand held open and upwards, a soft green and white glow emanating from his fingertips and reaching up, up, up to the barrier over them. Blaine realized, without shock, that it was Kurt who had stopped the collapse, and Kurt who was keeping it from crushing them all.  

“Get… everyone… out…” Kurt uttered, his voice strained as he looked upwards with deadly focused eyes that Blaine could now see the unearthly color of. He could also see the tension in Kurt’s muscles, the tears in his reddened eyes, and could hear the heavy, panting breaths he made as he focused his attention on the barrier. What he was doing clearly wasn’t easy for him, and was taking everything he had.

The direction was for Elizabeth, who stood up and rushed to the capital, slopping her legs through the high water, to work on evacuating its people, because Kurt had not released his grip on Blaine one iota. If anything, it was stronger than ever, and Blaine stared, silent in amazement, at the wonder that was his husband. Somehow Kurt had figured out how to save them - something he had a knack for doing, and Blaine wasn't surprised in the least that Kurt had found a way to do it again.

“Kurt... “

“Just stay with me,” Kurt’s voice cracked out, threatening to break as the bubble above them was. “I need you.”

“Of course.”  

Blaine gently stroked his fingers over Kurt’s arms, so taunt from straining, and gently whispered the best cheerleading phrases he could muster.  

“You can do this.”  
“You’re strong.”  
“I believe in you.”

It was cheesy, but it was the only thing Blaine could think of to help. His worry was directed entirely upon Kurt, knowing his husband would do something stupid like sacrifice himself to save others, and Blaine had already had enough of that. He wasn't able to exist without Kurt anymore. As far as Blaine was concerned, it wasn’t even an option.

Others rushed around them, directing an evacuation effort to all corners of the realm. Portal coins were taken and shared, and several constant portals were opened for those that didn’t have a contact on the other side to have a private portal. One by one, Others left, until the only ones left were Kurt, Blaine, and a small contingent of Others around them including Elizabeth. By the point that happened, Kurt's eyes were dry and the tears had left cheetah streaks down alongside his nose, his skin was red from strain, and his teeth had ground down upon each other. Blaine wasn't sure if it had been five minutes or five hours, but he knew that Kurt was suffering with each second.

“We have to get out,” Blaine finally whispered to Kurt, when it was clear by the way Elizabeth looked at him pleadingly that they needed to make their way out the portal that had been set up near them.

“Everyone else… I’ll hold it until then…” Kurt choked out, so strained and forced that Blaine worried if he’d be able to keep his voice afterwards.

“No. Together,” Blaine insisted, pushing his legs up to a standing position and forcing Kurt to stand up along with him, his legs wobbly and weakened such that they were more jelly than bone. One of the furry Berserkers that had stayed behind went to Kurt’s left side while Blaine supported the right, helping him stay on his feet as they moved towards the portal, sloshing through the water that was up to their knees. Through it all, Kurt kept his hand up towards the ocean, willing it back and away from everyone despite the obvious strain it was taking on him.

As a group they backed into the portal, letting Kurt’s extended arm be the last thing brought through.  Blaine had never consciously been in one of the things before, and despite the need to take care of Kurt, who hunched over, unconscious, the moment they were out of the underwater realm, and the realization that he had escaped death once again, Blaine let himself watch in awe as they walked through a starry field, like something he had seen out of a science fiction show when he was little, to a light on the other end, the less-than-proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, and emerged in a field where hundreds of Others were gathered.  

They were back on the surface, with a real sun shining down on them and a real wind blowing warmth over their bodies. Grass, real green grass that crunched when their feet stepped on it, extended out in front of them, and there were trees in the distance, imperfectly formed. The trees below all looked too perfect to be real, such that Blaine had once questioned Kurt on if they were plastic replicas.  

The portal was snapped shut behind them and Blaine dropped to his knees so he could cradle Kurt in his arms and looked over at Elizabeth who rushed to join them, kneeling down. She laid her hands on her son, so delicately, and murmured softly until the paleness in Kurt’s face faded away and his breathing steadied.

“He should be alright…”  

Despite her powers of healing, and her years of experience, Elizabeth still sounded like any worried mother might, and kept watch over her son, whom Blaine refused to move away from his lap, while the Others tried to organize themselves in chaotic herds around them. As some point a blanket was given to them, which Elizabeth wrapped around Kurt, in particular his legs which had their pants glued to them from the water.

“Your father is dead, isn’t he?” Blaine finally asked, looking apologetically at Elizabeth who cast her eyes away and nodded once.

“It was all a trap… and in killing him, they destroyed our home.”

The first thought that came to Blaine’s mind was that it seemed only fair given how many homes the Others had taken from humans, but he didn’t say it. He still liked Elizabeth, regardless of her heritage, and she was Kurt’s mother. It wasn’t a relationship he wanted to strain, especially now that they were alive and he would likely have to live with her for a long time now. Moreover, Blaine didn't think getting caught up in a cycle of hurting one another was healthy. At some point there needed to be peace and stability for both sides.

“What now?”

Elizabeth glanced up, regarding Blaine quietly a moment with eyes that twinned Kurt’s own, rimmed in water. “We don’t know.”

Again his mind spat things out that weren’t worth saying. He thought of how fitting it was that the Others were now homeless, as humans had once been, and how now they, too, would have to fight to survive. Though, as far as that went, Blaine was pretty sure they wouldn’t have to fight as hard given their abilities and magic.

Blaine gently rocked Kurt in his arms as he slept, and in his slumber Kurt snuggled in against Blaine’s stomach. Voices around them gave Blaine bits and pieces of information, but only those spoken in English.  

“We could set up a camp…”  
“If we settle all in one place, it would make it easier for them to annihilate us.”  
“Where are we to go?”  
“What stopped the flood?”  
“It was the Quarterling.”  
“How?”  
“Surely he’s not as strong as his grandfather.”  
“They killed Finavar. We should be retaliating.”  
“We can’t even figure out where we’re going to live now.”  
“Maybe the Quarterling can build us a new home.”  
“Even if he could, he’s mortal. It would be broken within an age upon his death.”  
“A temporary safe place is better than none at all.”  
“If he could have built one, don’t you think he would have just reinforced the old one?”

Off and on Blaine listened, and ignored the stares given to Kurt by Others passing by in search of friends and family. No one was sure what to do, and everyone seemed to be impatient as far as Kurt waking was concerned. The pace of Blaine's heart hadn't faltered yet, still not rising to beat too fast or dragging slowly along. If anything, it seemed to time itself along with Kurt's pulse, which he could feel through Kurt's hand that he held in his own.

Elizabeth had to leave after a while, to tend to those who injured themselves in their frantic escapes. There were only mild cuts, bruises, and the occasional break - but those were considered treatment-worthy nonetheless, since healers could fix them with just a thought.

A perimeter was established, with Halflings and Berserkers at the front lines, there to guard against humans that might try to attack. Blaine overheard that they were somewhere in old California territory from an Other familiar with the land, and even though he had been to the state before to visit his brother years ago, it didn’t look like any area he was familiar with. Granted, he had only ever been in the busy metropolises that rimmed the coastline, never in an open area like they were now. To that point, Blaine didn’t even realize there was anything but cities in California.

It was funny. If they were in California, this would have been Blaine’s chance to see if he could venture out to Los Angeles and see if Cooper’s home had survived the Tides, and maybe even Cooper himself, yet the thought was only fleeting in his mind. So much time had passed, and as much as he still loved his brother, the only person that mattered to him was in his arms, murmuring in his sleep and clutching the bottom of Blaine’s shirt as he dreamed.  

Kurt didn’t wake until the moon was at its apex in the sky and the stars lit up the heavens. Most of the Others had made camp themselves, waiting for their leaders to emerge and tell them what to do next. Elizabeth and her companion Claudius had dozed off on the ground beside the boys, and yet Blaine wasn’t tired at all. It was good to be back on land, to smell real air and see the night sky again. His arms were numb and tingly from the pressure of Kurt’s body on them, but he dared not move them and risk waking Kurt earlier than necessary.  

“Mm… we okay?”

Blaine dropped his chin down and smiled at Kurt, who was rubbing the sleep from his eyes with a balled up fist. “Yeah. You saved us. Again, for that matter. Regular superhero you are.”

Kurt shook his head as he sat up, stretching his arms up and out with a yawn which allowed Blaine to stretch his own, his fingers burning as the blood returned to them. “No. I saved you.”

“You saved everyone, Kurt.”

As was his husband’s way, Kurt shrugged off the comment as if it wasn’t a big deal. As if it was something expected and therefore not to be celebrated. Blaine may as well have been been telling Kurt that he had wiped his own bum for the response he was getting.

“Sweetheart?” Elizabeth had woken on hearing Kurt’s voice and swiftly sat up and crawled over to hug him. “Oh sweetheart.”

“Uck. I’m okay, mom,” Kurt grumbled, though appeased her with a brief hug back, clearly no more interested in public displays of affection from his mother than he was when Blaine tried it. “Hey… can you do something for me?”

Elizabeth nodded quickly on pulling back from Kurt. “Of course, sweetheart. Anything.”

Kurt didn’t explain what he wanted, just turned back to Blaine and took his hands in his own. “I’m not sure if you’ll feel anything Blaine… just… know it won’t hurt.”

Blaine’s brows went up just as Kurt murmured something under his breath, a glow passing between him and Kurt over their joined hands. Something in him felt cooler, though he couldn’t quite explain what, or why, and his heart started thumping faster in his chest. He had lost something, or rather, Kurt had used his magic to take something from him.

“Heal him now, mother.”

Then Elizabeth’s hand was on his chest, palm and fingers spread flat across his shirt, and a sharp stab of heat hit him from between his lungs, spreading out through his body and out to his fingers and toes. It made him quaver, yet he did not try to pull away or fight back. Instead, he took in a gasped breath as he felt the soreness in his knee ebb out of him, the constant tug of tightened scars in his back smooth out, and a general feeling of well being flow through him.

Kurt had figured out how to take whatever spell he had put on Blaine off, and as Elizabeth pulled away, and took the heat of her healing with her, Kurt snuck around Blaine and lifted up the back of his shirt without permission, releasing a happy cry. “It’s gone!”

A forced smile crept its way onto Blaine’s face and he turned to look back at Kurt, who let his shirt fall back down, knowing quite well that Kurt was talking about the accursed scars on his back that he had never been able to look at. “You figured out how to use it…”

“Yeah…”  

Kurt returned to Blaine’s front side and took his hands in his own again, and within moments Blaine felt the piece Kurt had pulled away from him be put back into place - snapped in like it was always meant to be there, and ensuring that he would be protected from the magic of Others.

“How did you figure it out?”

Kurt shrugged his shoulders up a little, though he kept his hands on Blaine’s even though he was done with whatever spell or incantation or whatnot he had set out to do. “I just… I just remembered what I did when I protected you before… it’s always been about protecting you… the magic kind of works out of that… I wish I could explain it better. You might as well ask me how I figured out how to eat or drink… I just did it out of a need to.”

No more words were shared after that. Blaine didn’t want to press it and Kurt seemed disinclined to speak about it. Together they curled up, Kurt wound up in Blaine’s arms and Blaine in Kurt’s, face-to-face, laying on the ground as they had done before on so many runs in order to rest for the night. Kurt was still tired and recuperating from the energy he had used up to utilize his magic, and Blaine, finally feeling like he didn’t have to worry about protecting Kurt as he slept, was able to rest in turn. It didn’t seem to matter how many voices spoke around them, or how many footsteps fell within earshot, both of them were exhausted, grateful to be alive, and with one another - and so they let sleep come over them.

When morning came, it was with the amazing feel of real sunlight blanketing their bodies, warming their skin where they were exposed to it. Kurt was already sitting up when Blaine finally relented to consciousness and joined him.

Only to discover they had an audience in front of them.

“What’s going on?” Kurt said, brows lifting as he regarded the group of Others sitting in front of him, looking to him, and patiently waiting for… something.

“They want to know what the next step is,” Elizabeth said from their side before setting a bowl of what looked like oatmeal in front of them, clearly ready for them to be awake.

“Well, I don’t damned well know,” Kurt grunted, looking to his mother and then down to the food given to him. “Why don’t they ask the council?”

“They ARE the council, sweetheart.”

Blaine watched as Kurt did a doubletake, his eyes open and disbelieving at first, but then narrowing as he seemed to recognize individuals. “What the hell…?”

“You saved the people. You are foretold and -”

Kurt held out a hand to stop the man at the forefront of the group from talking more, and Blaine couldn’t help but smirk as his husband shook his head. “No, no, no, I don’t want to hear it.  Don’t start telling me I’m some chosen one too. I saved my family. That’s the end of it.”

The council members looked at one another, and began to babble along in their language, allowing Blaine a moment to sneak some bites of breakfast and peek at Kurt who wasn't touching his own, just looking irritated by the fact that he wasn't able to wake up in peace.

Finally the council's murmurings went down and they looked all at once again to Kurt, and the leader again spoke. "It has been so long since we have all been up top... this has not been our home for generations. As a product of both worlds, and the one who has saved us, we want to know what you think we should do. Take over the humans? Try to rebuild our underwater world?"

"Neither of those," Kurt spat quickly, and both Elizabeth and Blaine were taken aback by the ferocity of Kurt's speech and the fact that he didn't immediately disinvolve himself from the decision making. "You coexist."

It clearly wasn't the response they were expecting, and the number of wide eyes and shared glances between the council members were in the dozens by Blaine's count.  

"But -"

"No but's," Kurt insisted, breaking in. "You want my opinion - here it is. You figure out how to live with humans. Your history books showed that it was that way before and the only reason that changed was because you got too elitist and went into isolation. Screw that. You're not killing any more humans, and hiding under the water is clearly a safety issue. Even if I could create a new bubble for you all to live in like my grandfather did, it would only last as long as I live, and I'm mortal. You'd have to come out eventually. So stop being such whiny babies and deal with your problems in a mature manner. Make things work with humans. Stop treating Halflings as less important - especially since you're obsessed with making more of them. You want to survive? Do it then, but not at the expense of more lives."

"Whiny babies..?" one of the council members in the back repeated, and Blaine lifted a hand to cover his mouth which tried to let out a giggle.

"But... we attacked them..." the leader member uttered.

"Yes, and they attacked you back. Let it be over."

Solemnly, the group looked down in unison as they considered it individually before chattering once more. Blaine wasn't sure why they kept darting between English and their own language, and felt like it had something to do with his presence, but, since this conversation didn't include him, he didn't know why they would bother.

"What about us?" Blaine asked quietly, looking over to Kurt when it became clear that the conversation between the council members was ongoing.

"I don't know... I guess we find a new place..." Kurt whispered back, eyes warily on the Others before them.  

"Where though?"

"I have an idea..." Elizabeth said just as softly, looking to them both as they turned to look at her. "A place I went once with Kurt's father... and a place I passed through after the Tides..."

The mention of Kurt's dad made Blaine's husband perk up a single eyebrow and purse his lips together thoughtfully, and Blaine made sure they all knew that, "so long as I'm with Kurt, I'll be happy."

"... and my grandbaby of course," Elizabeth added on.

"That too," Blaine said, a grin crossing over his face at the thought. They would still be parents. They had survived and so they could still raise their baby.

Their future still looked like a happy ending.

"She's not far from this location you know... the surrogate. Once we figure this all out, we could travel that way, hopefully in time for the birth, and then make our way to a place of our own."

Blaine nodded, while Kurt's eyebrows bunched and furrowed as he kept his thoughts to himself, thoughts that were put on hold as the council redirected their attention his way and spoke again.

"We fear dying off, becoming no more... if the humans kill us, that could easily happen."

Kurt’s attention was pulled back to the council. "What do you think humans go through all the time? Look, I'm not going to give you a whole sappy speech on using your time on earth wisely or how you live on in the hearts and minds of others. You guys have been around long enough to all wax poetic about it all, but I will tell you that working with the humans is still your best bet to be able to live as long as you can. Start shared communities, work on developing, or rather, redeveloping this world together... you guys have power and humans have the grit and strength... it's why Halflings are so valuable to you, right? The best of both worlds... yet you don't acknowledge their voices in council. Change that."

Silence, and Blaine watched as Kurt scanned to faces to see if any of his words had the desired effect, and it took a minute, but finally they began nodding.

"Yes... we will try."

"Good."

The council members waited a moment, watching Kurt as if they expected him to say more or do more, but he was clearly done with them, turning back to Blaine and his mother.  

"Okay... let's plan."

 

* * *

 

The Others became their more typical, organized selves after that. Guards were still posted, but over the next several days, the guards were more typically Berserkers and less Halflings as Halflings left. Most went to return to the places of their human origins, while others grouped together to settle in places they knew about from their travels. They were the emissaries, the ones that would create safe havens for the purebloods to travel to, and the ones that would work on making peaceful connections with the humans they encountered.

The reports suggested, and it wasn’t a surprise, that their attempts to bring peaceful tidings to the human groups they had encountered were less than successful. Kurt had had to explain to the council, who were speaking to him almost daily despite his insistence that he didn’t want to be involved, why humans wouldn’t suddenly just accept the words of the people that had been responsible for the deaths of millions and millions of their kind. It would take time, work, and generosity on behalf of the Others before humans would come around - and even then it would be suspiciously.  

Time was something Others had though. They would live long enough to see the fruits of their efforts, even if it took a few generations for it to occur. That’s where the generosity came into play. Others would have to use their magic for the benefit of humans for the humans to see how working with them was advantageous. To that end, Halflings with different abilities were clustered so that they could present their abilities as gifts for human assistance in the struggle to survive. Healers, those that could help food grow, those that could speak with animals, ones that could create things at alarming speeds - they were sent to all corners.

Elizabeth was the only healer who stayed, as Kurt made it clear that she would be accompanying him to wherever he settled, and the council seemed alright with that as far as Blaine could tell.  While Kurt dealt with council business, Elizabeth showed Blaine on a map she had found their intended destination - a place near the Rocky Mountains, further south than where the community was, and close to both a river and a lake.

“I went by there only a couple years ago during one of my stints above land. It was still untouched,” she explained, trailing her finger over the map back towards their location.

When Blaine showed Kurt later on, Kurt was quiet, eyes clouded over in thought until he finally let his adam’s apple bob and looked to Blaine. “If you want… we could go back to the community…”

To that, Blaine let his brows furrow in confusion. “Why Kurt? Why would I do that to you?”

“Because I’m okay with being an outsider… I got used to it… but I know how much our friends mean to you, and the kids…”

Blaine couldn’t help but smirk a little, and at Kurt’s alarmed reaction he quickly explained. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to stay here, with the Others.”

“Why would I do that to you?”

“Because you’re accepted here. They’re looking to you for guidance now. No matter what your bloodline… you’re one of them.”

“I’m not doing that to you. I might be accepted, but you’ll only ever be seen as a novelty among the pure-blooded.”

“So… your mom’s idea…?”

Kurt nodded. “Fine.”

Of course, planning to go there was one thing, but before they could move along they had to wait. Kurt was still in demand as something of an expert on humans, and the woman carrying their baby was en route with her Halfling lover. Blaine bustled with nerves over that detail, especially since they were no longer as prepared as they had been below the water. He and Elizabeth tag-teamed getting whatever they could in preparation for the baby - a sling for carrying while they were on the road, bottles, blankets, changes of clothing, some kind of concentrated formula-like stuff Others had which was made from real breast milk, and diapers.

It was clear that each one of them would be carrying a bag dedicated to the baby itself while they were on the road, and Blaine had to wonder how responsible it even was to go out into the world with a baby given that they had no certainty the place Elizabeth had in mind was still livable.  

And… Blaine and Kurt hadn’t even settled on a name yet. The list and notes he had made were probably soaked through and fish food, and Blaine was in a panic trying to remember all the names and why he had selected them.

“I don’t understand why this doesn’t upset you more, given what your mom told us about the importance of names…” Blaine muttered to Kurt one evening as they lay under the stars despite the fact that most of the Others had set up tents for their temporary housing.

“I think you’re worrying enough for all of us,” Kurt grunted back, his arm slung over his eyes to block out any light.

“But it could happen any day now and the name is something that’ll be theirs forever… what if they hate it?”

“All kids hate their name at some point,” was Kurt’s huffed response. Blaine knew he was trying to sleep, and was being purposely dismissive of Blaine’s concern as such, but Blaine wasn’t backing down.

“... but I don’t want them to hate it when they’re an adult… I just wish you’d chip in a little.”

“Fine. Olga for a girl and Sergei for a boy.”

That earned Kurt a jab to the side from Blaine, who made sure to put on his best glare when Kurt yelped and then scowled back at him. “Come on.”

“It doesn’t matter what we call the kid, so long as it knows it’s loved.”

It was an uncharacteristically sappy remark from Kurt, and one that made Blaine’s melt a little, as well as his expression. “Oh…”

“Now let me sleep, damn it.”

He gave Kurt his space on the issue, even when the child they were going to have became more real the day a human woman was escorted into the camp atop of a horse and accompanied by a Halfling on another horse. They were brought straight to where Kurt and Blaine had set themselves up and Blaine nearly jumped out of his shoes when he realized the human woman came off the horse to reveal her round belly. This was the mother.

She could have been either Kurt or Blaine’s sister. She had curly hair, pulled back into a tight ponytail, but it was brown instead of black. Her eyes were amber like Blaine’s, and she was taller than most women, even standing taller than Blaine who cursed his short stature internally. Her partner was her opposite, blonde, lanky, and blue-eyed - always watching her human mate with the same adoring eyes Blaine knew he had on Kurt.

“I carry your kid for nine months and I don’t even get to go to what I was told was Utopia,” the human woman snarled by means of greeting, waddling her way towards Kurt as she was pointed in his direction.

Blaine wanted to reach out, touch her belly, and feel the baby, but instead managed to hold himself back and instead watched Kurt, whose eyes went from that bubble to the woman’s face and back down again. His eyes widened slightly, and Blaine knew from his expression that then, and only then, the baby had become real for him.  

“I’m… sorry?” Kurt offered awkwardly as he stood up from where he had been crouching by the firepit and offered a hand. “Kurt.”

“Chelsea,” snarked the woman in response, taking the offered hand and giving it a brief shake. “Whatever. Just make this kid come out faster. I’m done with this.”

That seemed to be the cue for Elizabeth to come squealing down from among Others, and doing what Blaine had resisted - namely setting her hands on Chelsea’s belly and her ear for that matter despite Chelsea’s scowl. “My grandbaby!”

Kurt put his palm up to his face and groaned. “Off, mother. Let her be…”

“But... my grandbaby.”

“Off.”

Blaine couldn’t help but chuckle and shared a look with Chelsea’s Halfling mate, both smirking and keeping off to the side through the otherwise awkward interaction between Kurt and Chelsea, with Elizabeth having forced her way between them.

Chelsea was escorted by Kurt and Elizabeth to the makeshift clinic and Blaine and the Halfling followed quietly until the woman uttered, “sorry. My girlfriend is fairly aggressive. I hope for both your sakes that’s a trait the kid doesn’t pick up.”

“I hope the baby does,” Blaine responded, offering the woman a smile. “You have to be a fighter to get by in this world. Besides…” He nodded towards Kurt’s back and dropped his voice, “my husband isn’t much better with social niceties.”

“Do you know where you’ll go once you have the baby?”

Blaine nodded slowly. “Yeah… We think so anyhow. What about you two?”

“Somewhere warm and remote. I had to make her promises when our world was flooded. She doesn’t like crowds, or the cold… and she’s had to put up with both for many years.”

It sounded familiar, and Blaine had to hold in a smirk at how much this couple seemed to be akin to himself and Kurt. It almost seemed serendipitous that they would be the ones who had taken care of their baby for its first nine months.  

Inside the clinic, Chelsea was laying down, Elizabeth now in healing mode and less ‘aggressive grandmother’ mode, accompanied by a couple other Others, including one of those white-eyed things that Kurt referred to as Ilu. Together they were producing various glows that all came together at Chelsea’s belly in a rainbow spectrum. Chelsea didn’t seem like she was in any pain, which must have been nice considering how agonizing the birthing process was for the human women Blaine had helped through delivering their babies, and Kurt stood off to the side, watching it all with his breath held and his face even more pale than normal.

“Excited?” Blaine whispered, coming up beside his husband.

“Scared as hell,”  Kurt murmured back, never taking his eyes away from the proceedings where Chelsea’s partner had crouched beside her and taken her hand.

“I think that’s normal.”

Kurt snorted at that, and Blaine felt his hand being taken and squeezed. “Blaine… the only thing normal in this world is that nothing is normal.”

Days ago Blaine was okay with dying, now he got to experience life in its finest moment, so he couldn’t help but agree, especially when the voices of everyone around them fell silent at the cry of a baby amidst them. Their baby.  

 

 


	45. Chapter 42: To Splash

_** ** _

_**“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.** _

_**Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.”** _

_**― Bruce Lee** _

 

Kurt had seen and heard many births happening in the community through the years. They were all unique in their duration and intensity, but they all had common elements. Typically there would be a lot of screaming which became progressively louder and more venomous the closer the woman got to birth. Blaine and Mike had both noted to Kurt that, in the past, there had been drugs more readily available to help sooth the process, but, of course, such things were not common in the time they lived in. So it was that everyone knew when a woman was giving birth by the shrill shrieks that would echo from the clinic, along with every curse word the woman knew. Kurt had stomached tales about men that had to dodge blood, feces, and amniotic fluid when they were asked to watch the birth progress if the medic in charge had to step out for anything. There was always a clean-up after a woman gave birth too, as the bed they laid on could not hold the massive amount of gross matter she had expelled along with the infant. On occasion, Blaine would tell Kurt they needed to get more sheets for the clinic because the sheets they did have would need to be burned from a particularly messy delivery. After the birth, men could often be seen with scratches and bruises on their hands from where their partners had gripped them too tightly, and it wasn’t an exaggeration to say that a few men had suddenly sprouted grey hairs after seeing their partner in such a precarious and awkward position.  

So, to say the least, Kurt expected the birth of his child to be full of noise, gore, and drama, and had mentally prepared himself for the worst as such - yet the way the birth went was nothing like anything Kurt could have fathomed.

To start with, it was calm. Whatever pain the mother might have felt in the community had been numbed and cancelled out by the work of his mother and the Ilu chanting near her so that Chelsea could freely converse with her Halfling mate without having to cringe and gasp and cry out between words as so many mothers-to-be in the community would have done. Had Elizabeth not noted to one of the Ilu that the baby was coming, Kurt would have just thought what he was viewing from the sidelines was nothing more than a check up given how laid back everyone seemed to be. Well… everyone except for Blaine, who was bouncing on his toes beside him, and Elizabeth, who, while professional with Chelsea, kept looking up at Kurt with a stupid grin, so annoyingly excited over the birth of her grandchild.

There was also no visible signs of blood or fluid being spilled. Of course, Kurt couldn’t see what was happening down below on Chelsea, as a drape had been put over her to cover her from the abdomen down. The Ilu attending the birth were very attentive to cleaning and removing whatever came from her, and when one uttered that the fluid they had gathered would be “great for experiments”, Chelsea’s mate glowered at them with such intensity that the other Ilu there was quick to note that it would be disposed of properly.

Finally, it was quiet. The conversation Chelsea was having with her mate was done in whispers, the attendants at the birth seemed to communicate more with their eyes than their mouths, and Kurt and Blaine only spoke of their joy through their held hands - each one periodically squeezing the other.

Then a cry finally broke the silence, making Elizabeth tear up and gasp as she pulled and lifted up the newborn, Kurt’s baby, for everyone to see. It was his baby that cried, letting everyone around know it was there, it was alive, and, damn it, it wasn’t going to let things be quiet any longer. Blaine’s hold around Kurt’s hand went firm, blocking the flow of blood into it, and Kurt didn’t even care, unable to remove his eyes from the child as it was wiped clean of residual blood, fluid, and checked over by Elizabeth who seemed to be taking her sweet time with it before handing it over to Kurt and Blaine.

The Ilu went about tending to Chelsea at that point, who hadn’t even looked to the baby even though Kurt caught her mate checking it out. They massaged her distended belly and continued to keep things clean while Elizabeth cooed over the baby, finally wrapping a cloth diaper around it and swaddling it in a velvety soft blanket before, reluctantly, holding it out to Kurt.

“A baby girl…She’s so beautiful…”

Blaine made a joyful gasp beside Kurt, though Kurt was sure that Blaine would have made the same sound if the infant was a boy. Really, the fact they were, in that instant, becoming parents was a miracle enough such that the sex of the baby was immaterial.

But Elizabeth was right. The baby, his baby, was beautiful.

Taking her into his arms was surreal, and though Kurt had held so many babies over the years, he found himself worrying more than he ever had before over how he was supporting her and if she was secure enough in his arms. He had never felt more unsure of himself than in that moment, Blaine peeking down at the small, squirming bundle in his arms and Elizabeth hovering over them both, arms out just in case Kurt did manage to drop her.

But he didn’t. He cradled her up and against his chest, her tiny ear tipping in against his ribs right where his heart was thumping in his chest. She only had a tiny wisp of hair, dark and still wet from birth, and her little eyes were from him - already so light despite the fact that all newborn babies Kurt had ever seen had had dark eyes to begin with. Her little pink lips plumped and suckled at the air, and, again, despite all his experience, Kurt found himself at a temporary loss for what to do about that until Elizabeth finally darted off for a moment, returning with a bottle she had readied which Kurt held up to the infant’s lips to drink from.

“She looks so much like you Kurt…” Blaine finally spoke, a hand on Kurt’s shoulder and another just hovering over the little girls’ face as he marveled in her existence.

“She’s perfect,” Elizabeth added on firmly, as if she would think anything else.

Kurt understood then, finally, why Elizabeth had been so giddy with joy and why Blaine had been so focused on this child that was truly theirs. It wasn’t a baby he’d have to hand back to someone eventually, to have to watch leave his home. This child would be completely raised by them. This child wouldn’t be pulled away by fearful parents as Beth was, or only brought over when it was being too fussy as so many of their friends had relied on him for.  He would see it during its good times and bad.  This child would call him dad.

Eventually Kurt handed the infant off to Blaine so he could get a chance to hold and feed her, understanding with complete clarity why Elizabeth had been so hesitant in giving her up to Kurt. It wasn’t because of them lacking trust in the person they were giving the baby to. If anything, Kurt trusted Blaine more than he trusted himself. The issue was that the instant the baby was gone, Kurt felt his arms and chest cool, and his heart along with them, as if his daughter belonged there and no where else.

The next few days passed by in a blur as Kurt gave up sleep in order to keep his eyes on his little princess as much as he could, even though there were two others by him that were more than willing to attend to her needs. He was vaguely aware that they were visited by members of the council, coming to view the first “Eighthling” in existence and extend their congratulations. Gifts were presented - everything from benign blankets to diapers that were apparently enchanted to dissipate any output into nonexistence, and Kurt was doubly thankful for Blaine who marvelled over each gift and thanked the one offering it sincerely so that Kurt wouldn’t have to feign interest or courtesy. Elizabeth, meanwhile, was getting them all organized and prepared to travel. A few others would be joining them to establish whatever home they found, mostly magicless Halflings that Blaine had befriended, and she wanted to ensure they had enough horses and supplies for the journey.

After the birth, Chelsea and her partner had left as soon as she was okayed by Elizabeth, and it was Blaine that asked the question that Kurt dared not to - not because he didn’t want to know, but because he feared the answer.

“Are you sure you’re okay with all this?”

She had, thankfully, asserted that she was more than alright with it, that she was done being a baby carrier, and that she was off to a sunny island paradise her girlfriend had promised her. Chelsea hadn’t even wanted to see the baby after she had birthed it, and for that Kurt was also grateful because he was sure that anyone who saw his precious little girl would instantly fall in love with her.

Midhir had also visited, giftless and glancing to the infant who was in Blaine’s arms at the time of his arrival apprehensively. Speaking so that Blaine couldn’t understand, Kurt finally realized what Blaine had been suggesting might be true.

“You could stay Kurt…”

“This isn’t a home for me,” Kurt responded tersely, disliking how Midhir was purposely excluding Blaine from the conversation by speaking in the tongue of the Others.

“You know he won’t live as long as you will...“

“And I told you - that doesn’t matter to me,” Kurt insisted. It did matter though. Everytime he heard someone suggest it, his heart seemed to stiffen up and ache in his chest; yet, it would be no easier to give up Blaine then than it would be to give him up when he died - so Kurt choose to spend all the time he could with him that he was afforded.

“... I will live a long life though Kurt,” Midhir’s said softly, and Kurt recognized that the jealousy in Blaine was not mindless. He reached out to set a hand on Midhir’s shoulder, firm, and matched it with a solid gaze Midhir’s way.

“Thank you for being a good FRIEND in my time below. It meant a lot to me.”

The message was received, and Midhir gave Kurt a small, sad nod before pulling away and leaving without a second glance.  

They set out just before dawn, taking a path he and Elizabeth had agreed upon, with one necessary detour along the way to take care of some business that he and Elizabeth had met with the council about. Most people were still sleeping in their tents when they left, and that was fine by Kurt who just wanted to leave the crowded area for somewhere more remote, and more his own. Travel was slow, as their baby was carried in a sling that they alternated between himself, Blaine, and Elizabeth and none of them wanted to jostle her too much. Besides, there was no rush.

Now, Kurt thought highly of Blaine, but he had to admit to himself that Blaine could easily fall prey to his daydreams and lose track of what was going on in the real world, as evidenced when Blaine finally looked to Kurt after riding for three days and asked, “Are we going North? I thought we were going East…” with a cocked head.

Kurt smirked to himself, glad for his husband’s absent mind and nodded. “Yeah… we need to pick up something in a community up North before we turn East. It’s only a few days extra.”

That sated Blaine’s curiosity, and he returned to gently petting over their baby girl’s little tuft of hair over and over again as she slept nestled in against Blaine’s chest. It was the best thing to look at, and a sight Kurt was sure he would never tire of. She was, so far, a good baby, and had done well on the trip thus far. Elizabeth had said it would be better to travel when she was still fresh because she’d sleep more than she would it they had waited a few weeks, and, so far, it seemed she had been right.

Every night they camped, and unlike the times Blaine and Kurt had been on runs, they didn’t have to set up the camp or worry about sleeping directly on the ground - especially when it was wet from rainfall. The Halflings that accompanied them were industrious folk, keen on proving their worth by doing the setup and takedown each day, such that all Kurt had to worry about was making sure his daughter was taken care of.  

They didn’t always stay in a camp though, especially as they moved further north. Settlements, both human, Other, and a mix of the two, were happened upon. Those Others that had left the refugee camp before them had crossed this way and so the people they met at the settlements already knew why they were travelling in such a diverse group. Sometimes they’d invite the group to stay with them, other times, with more wary tones, they’d suggest that it would be alright if the group camped near their settlement. In any event, they were helpful in so much as they were willing to help restock Kurt’s group with food and supplies so they could continue on their way without having to scavenge or hunt - much as Kurt was eager to see if he could still hunt as well as he used to.

As they neared their first destination, the stop they needed to make on behalf of the council, the air cooled and the winds picked up. It would be winter soon. A year since he had left the community, if not more… Kurt wasn’t sure when he had stopped counting the days - sometime between accepting that Blaine was his other half and the current moment - but when a smile crossed his features as they trudged along somewhere near the border of what had been Washington state, Blaine took note.

“What are you grinning about?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s never just nothing with you,” Blaine insisted, alternating between smirking at Kurt and glancing at the little girl that Kurt presently had wrapped against his chest.

“I was just thinking… how much you changed my life.”

“Ah…” Blaine glanced back to the road, once a highway now overcome with moss, cracks, and weeds. “... hopefully for good.”

“Of course for good, you moron,” Kurt snapped back playfully, shaking his head. “I really don’t think I’d have figured out what I am, who I could be, and have this little one without you there messing around with my emotions.”

“Sorry,” Blaine said, clearly not sorry at all as he winked Kurt’s way. It made Kurt’s stomach stir up a little, and, if there was one negative to having a child and being on the road to a new home, it was that intimacy was difficult to come by. The number of times he had been turned on only to be cockblocked by a crying infant or Elizabeth coming in between them to talk about something only a mother could be interested in was well beyond the number of fingers and toes Kurt had to count on.

As they neared the settlement they were destined for, Kurt watched as Blaine’s brows furrowed and his head tilted in confusion. He would have to recognize some of what he was seeing, unless he really had been out of it for most of that part of his trip to find Kurt. Kurt had ensured Blaine was the one carrying the baby as they approached the edge of the town, so that when Blaine, inevitably, spoke up, there wouldn’t be much he could do.

“This is where I was captured… Kurt…”

Kurt had halted his horse, and was sliding off the side of it with a newly made quill and bow from their time in the refugee camp in one hand. Elizabeth and Claudius were also dismounting, coming up behind him along with a Berserker and a Halfling that weren’t really going to travel the whole length to their new home with them.

“Kurt…” Blaine uttered, eyes going wide as they snapped from looking at the town to look at him instead.  “... Sebastian?”

Kurt just nodded, slipping the quiver of arrows over his head so they fell against his back.  

“But…”

“Council business,” Claudius noted, glancing up at Blaine with a firmness Kurt had not yet seen in him.  

Kurt could see clearly in Blaine’s face that he knew it was more than just council business, and it was. Sure, the council had asked them to deal with the instigator that had caused Finavar’s demise - but if Kurt got a certain joy out of also dealing with the one that had hurt Blaine… so be it. Regardless, Blaine wasn’t going to follow and Kurt knew it. Blaine’s heart was too gentle to be a part of what was going to be done, and he also had the baby to take care of.  

Their march into the town wasn’t ignored. The humans that lived there hung back and whispered - if they had chosen to stay outside anyhow. Many rushed into the buildings, slamming doors behind them as if they could protect them. Kurt knew enough from Blaine’s tale to know he was looking for what had been a bank, and yet he found he didn’t have to look for it at all because as they strode through town, they came across Sebastian and a few other former Warblers as they came out of what looked like a tavern.

When they saw Kurt and his brigade, they all stopped in their tracks.

“What the fu-” Sebastian started to say as his minions backed up and held their breath. Kurt hadn’t waited though. He had hesitated on too many occasions in the past and that hesitation had cost him. Before Sebastian could draw a weapon or say anything more, Kurt had launched an arrow into his hand, pinning it into the wood of the tavern behind him and cutting off the expletive that Sebastian had been uttering and turning it into a shriek of pain.

The other Warblers tried to run off - to either side of the building or back into the tavern, only to be rushed by a Berserker turned bear or find their feet frozen in place by Claudius. No one was to get away. The council knew that Kurt knew the faces of those that had caused the assassination of Finavar and he was the only one that would be able to pardon anyone not involved.

He also knew that the Warblers had been in on beating Blaine.

Sebastian’s free hand had moved to cup what he could of his now bloodied, stuck hand, trying to pry it free and squawking each time he tugged at it.

“I should just kill you,” Kurt said, darkness overcoming him as he advanced on Sebastian, who shrunk in against the wall as Kurt came close and then stopped a few feet before him.

“Please! I was just... I was just -” Sebastian was trying to come up with an excuse, an excuse that couldn’t be found as quickly as he wanted, and Kurt used the opportunity to launch another arrow into Sebastian’s second hand, pinning it beside the first and causing the man let loose another wail.

“Stop deflecting. Take ownership of your actions, damn it,” Kurt growled. He knew that everyone around had their eyes on him - both Other and human alike. He was the center of this circus, and he was going to take advantage of that spotlight.

Sebastian’s first response to Kurt’s demand was a whimper, and then, recognizing he was also part of the performance, tried to save face. “Blaine was a sympathizer to you… to Others… to freaks… I was the one protecting humans against you in whatever way I could.”

Kurt just rolled his eyes, taking another step forward and pulling another arrow from his quiver which he tucked under Sebastian’s chin. He hadn’t been intending to do more than intimidate Sebastian with the action, but the fact that Sebastian started urinating in his pants when Kurt touched the arrowhead against his face was icing on the cake. Everyone noticed the wet spot forming over the khaki colored pants on Sebastian, especially when the fabric became too saturated and it started leaking onto the desk below him in noisy drips. The Berserker bear even snickered in his bear form, sitting on top of a gasping-for-air Warbler to keep him from escaping.

“The only thing you’ve ever cared about, Sebastian, is yourself. You don’t care about other humans or else you wouldn’t have tried to take over a human community and threatened to kill them just so you could have a place of your own without having to negotiate living arrangements with the people there. You’ve even killed, and tried to kill, the people you considered your own when they became an inconvenience for you. Human, Other… it doesn’t matter to you. All that matters to Sebastian is Sebastian.”

“...that’s… it’s not…” Sebastian wavered, trembling as he looked up at Kurt and then down at the ground where his mess has pooled. “If you’re going to kill me… just do it.”

“If I had come here merely on behalf of what you did to Blaine, I would be… but I made a promise to the council… they’ll be the ones dealing with your mortality.”

That made Sebastian take in a sharp breath. On some level, he had to know that a quick death by Kurt’s arrows had to be better than what would await him with the Others. At the very least, he’d be subjected to being experimented on by the Ilu. “Please… please… no…”

“I promised you’d be taken to them alive… however…” Kurt reached up behind Sebastian and whipped up his shirt to expose his back, “... I didn’t promise them you’d be intact.”

Sebastian let out one final whine, and then, realizing it wasn’t doing any good to beg, gritted down on his teeth and cinched down his eyes. Kurt nodded over to the bear Berserker, who lifted off the Warbler (and who was in turn bound by ice arches spelled by Claudius) and lumbered behind Sebastian, lifting a claw and etching into the soft, sensitive skin.

Kurt didn’t watch. He looked to the other Warbler’s, watching their fearful expressions. Dealing pain wasn’t something he was okay with, even to someone as despicable as Sebastian. Nor was Kurt completely alright with sending the lot to their deaths. However, he now had not only Blaine to think about, but his daughter as well. Sebastian, no matter where he was or what he was doing, would always be a threat to their wellbeing as long as he was alive. That was made clear when Blaine crossed paths with him unintentionally. Kurt could not let the man get away with what he had done any longer, nor those that had gone along with it willingly.

So he pushed his disgust down deep inside him, trying to tune out the sound of Sebastian’s screaming sobs and pleading words. Elizabeth nodded to Kurt when he looked her way, a way of telling him that he was doing what needed to be done - even if it wasn’t the nicest thing to have to do. What was right wasn’t always what was easy.  

When Kurt heard the voice of the Berserker, having shifted back into his humanoid form, telling him it was done, Kurt looked back to Sebastian and had to gulp back the bile that instantly rose up in his throat. BACKSTABBER, just like Blaine had had to wear in his skin, carved into Sebastian’s back, deep and gorey.  

“Good.”  

The Berserker and the Halfling escorting the Warblers back south to the council went about chaining up the lot, all connected to the same enchanted chain, and Kurt mentally noted that they were all there, save for one that Blaine had told him had died not long after they had been relocated according to Sebastian. It was interesting that no one in the town tried to come to their rescue, or even tried to speak up for them, and Kurt had to wonder if they had taken this town with the same force they had tried to take his community by. He would never know for sure though, since as soon as he was given the okay by those Others he was leaving behind, Kurt was hurrying back to where he had left Blaine, his daughter, and their horses.

“I could hear him…” Blaine uttered quietly the instant Kurt and him connected eyes. Their daughter was still sleeping peacefully against Blaine, though now he was off the horse and pacing beside it.

Kurt nodded, stepping over to wrap one arm around Blaine and one around his daughter, to hold them both, to remind himself of what he was protecting. He would never let anyone or anything hurt them.

 

* * *

 

Getting to the spot his mother had in mind for a place to live took another couple weeks of steady travel on the horses, and as their baby got more alert each day, she also got more temperamental about the bumps and constant movement she was subjected to on the trip. It wasn’t uncommon for the whole group to have to stop so that Kurt could rock and settle her back down - as well as give her some time outside the sling.  They ran into fewer people as they moved inland, and even less as they crisscrossed into the mountain ranges, and while Blaine wondered aloud if they were travelling somewhere undesirable, Kurt was actually relieved that they might not have to worry about too many other people. He liked having his family all to himself.

Besides, as he had learned, other people - magical or otherwise - were a threat.

Everyone stopped at the peak of the hill overlooking the mountain resort that Elizabeth had pinpointed as their potential home. It wasn’t near any old major cities or towns, had a sizable lake and river system nearby which made it dangerous for humans to want to live near after the Tides, and had been chained up prior to the Tides occurring for intended renovations, chains which they broke easily. The main building was essentially a hotel with sizable rooms, however, because of its remote location, the main floor of the building was occupied with restaurants, small shops, and conference rooms, so that the vacationeers there could have all the amenities they were used to.

It also had a fitting name that was written out in big block letters on the side of the building - Eden.

A place for new beginnings. A place where the two races could start to work together as they had centuries ago. A quintessential paradise compared to the community as it was located in a warmer climate with a mountain range at their backs and a river at their breasts. It was so off the beaten path that it looked like no one had even tried to break into it over the years and so there was a wealth of treasures waiting for them in the main building, and while Kurt found value in the trucks and buses sitting in the large garage off the side of the building, as well as all the seasonal equipment for tourist groups like skis, snowshoes, and rock climbing gear, it was watching Blaine find the restaurant with the small stage that had been the shining moment of their exploration.

That restaurant must have had regular musicians come out to have the stage, and what was more was the variety of instruments tucked away in its storage room that had just been waiting for the past decade for someone to play them again. Blaine tuned them all with such care and patience that Kurt’s mother had to ask if everything was alright with him. He turned that old restaurant into his own music room, bringing their daughter there to play for her and sing old songs while Kurt hung outside the doorway while he was supposed to be working just so he could listen in.  

When they settled in Eden, they planned carefully - not just occupying any rooms, but ones that fit the size of their family units. The intent was that as people travelled and came through Eden, they might stay and the community might grow. All the shops and conference rooms on the main floor could be transformed into businesses, a clinic, and a school. Kurt would tend to the vehicles in the garage and try to get them operational again with the plant-based fuel he had managed to create back in the community, and all of them together would make this resort the site of a modern settlement that good people would want to come to.

Of course, when Kurt and Blaine had claimed their room, Elizabeth had protested.  

“There’s not enough beds in there for all of us!”

“That’s because you’re not staying in our suite, mother,” Kurt had said plainly to her, not responding to the look of relief on both Claudius and Blaine’s faces which Elizabeth hadn’t noted.

“But…my granddaughter…”

“Will just be a room away. People managed for centuries to take care of their own children in their own homes. Blaine and I aren’t inept-”

“I wasn’t saying you were inept, I was just saying that-”

“You’ll respect our need for space, mother.”

She had sulked for a bit after that, but given how Claudius and Blaine had responded, Kurt knew he was right for standing up to her. Besides, as much as he loved his mother and was grateful that she was back in his life, he also was well aware of how much he needed to have a place of his own with Blaine.  A place to wind their bodies up around one another and worship one another as quietly as they could to not awaken the infant in the cradle several feet away.

At some point, everyone had decided he was their de facto leader as well, though he never agreed to such a position. If a decision needed to be made, they asked him. If there was a problem, he was consulted. He tried to encourage them to think for themselves, but even when they came to him with a problem and solution, they still wanted input. For the sake of having to live with these people for as long as they were all there, Kurt opted to just accept his new rank so as not to offend anyone and to get things accomplished in the early days of the new settlement.

One of the Halflings had managed to get the plumbing working and another used their minor fire powers to create a furnace and light up a hot water tank, and for the first time in years Kurt was able to take a bath with ease. With the use of a portal coin, they were able to summon several Halflings that had a mix of knowledge about electricity and solar energy in order to create large solar panels for the room that helped them power the ovens and other appliances in the resort. It was the beginning of reclaiming the technology that had made life easier for humanity, and that would ensure Kurt’s daughter wouldn’t be left wanting.

 

* * *

 

In the first year, there wasn’t a lot of people that passed by, and those that did only spent a night or two before pressing on. The second year brought far more travellers as word had spread about the unofficial peace and the shared settlements. Kurt and Blaine were the ones to welcome most of the people who passed through, and the ones to welcome them back when they returned from their journeys. Most people, on hearing that there was peace, went to check on the homes they had left and look for missing relatives and friends. When they came up empty handed, as most had, they returned to Eden to settle there and begin their new lives.

It wasn’t without its difficulties though. Others were wary of humans and vice versa. There was racism, though mostly grumbled behind closed doors, and some people wouldn’t associate with others. Yet after people got to watch each other in action, and see that they weren’t there to cause problems, they did tend to mellow out. The second year was also the year a school was established in one of the old conference rooms since there were enough children around to require it. Blaine taught the children music, though he spent most of his time helping Elizabeth in the clinic they had founded

The third year they were there was the year something miraculous happened. It was the year that not only a human woman at the settlement was impregnated by a Berserker pure blood that had moved in, but that their union was recognized with a marriage. Most pureblood impregnation was done simply out of the need to preserve magic and spread it, but in this case the happy couple was actually in love with one another and their union was seen as a major breakthrough in relations between the two species.  

It was also the year that old friends showed up on their doorstep.

Kurt had not expected to see anyone from the community ever again. It was, especially compared with all the settlements he had seen in travelling to Eden, self-sufficient and strong. There would be no reason for anyone to leave there, especially when all his friends there had begun families and had put down roots.

Yet, late in August, as the residents in Eden were preparing to harvest the food they had planted in the farm plots they had created, Kurt found himself looking at a very familiar black woman and white man that had walked up to the resort along with two tall little girls and a toddler boy in tow.

“Sam… Mercedes…”

“Oh sweetie!” Mercedes yelled, scooping him into a hug with her powerful arms. “We never thought we’d see you again!”

“But… how? Why? When?”

Sam was the next one to give Kurt a hug, and as Kurt unintentionally smelled Sam’s clothing, he was immediately taken back to the community - dust, dirt, sprucewood, and canola. It was like smelling a memory.

“A few groups have travelled through the old community over the past couple years. Said they were at a place called Eden… said that it was run by Halflings and Humans alike… said there was a couple running it - one named Blaine that was a human, and one named Kurt that was a mixed blood…”

“But… why leave…?” Kurt asked, so surprised and happily so.

Mercedes made a small shrug and reached down to pick up the little ebony boy that was hiding bashfully behind her legs. “Because… we wanted to be part of the future for these guys here. Plus, I don’t know if you remember this, but I hate the winters up there. This luxurious cocoa skin needs more sun!”

Kurt laughed at that and then crouched down in front of the girls, knowing they were the same little girls he had tended to so many times when they were little, even though they clearly didn’t remember him. “Hey.”

“Hey,” the slightly paler one responded while the darker one waved shyly as she ducked behind her mother’s legs.  

“Wow… you’ve grown so much…” Kurt said with a shake of his head. It was surreal to have them in his memories as babies and now see them as… four. They must be four… maybe even five.

He gave them the tour, and ensured they were given a good sized room since it was clear their family was still expanding. Kurt didn’t even need to ask them the questions he usually had for potential new residents. He knew these people. He knew they were good. Hell, they were more than good, and Kurt knew it because as soon as he saw them again, his heart reminded him that they may as well have been family.

He wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

When Sam and Blaine saw one another - they gave each other what they called “the manliest of bro-hugs” after they had finally parted. Sam and Mercedes’ family were invited over for dinner, and dinner was when their daughter was shown off - now with long hair that Kurt carefully braided back each morning and dressed like a real young lady.  

“Oh my gosh Kurt! She’s so… you!” Mercedes cooed as she knelt down to greet the little princess.

“No. Imma me. I’m three.”

Sam laughed, introducing his children - Whitney, Aretha, and now young Memphis and then glanced to Kurt who nudged the back of his daughter. “Introduce yourself.”

Lifting her chin up, the little diva did just that, enunciating every syllable of her name with a hard tone. “I’m Victoria Ellen Katharine Hummel-Anderson.”

“Oh… wow,” Sam could only utter before grinning sidelong to Blaine in a way that clearly translated to him in some way and making him chuckle in response.

Sam and Mercedes weren’t the first to show up. Within a couple of months, Nick and Jeff were being toured around Eden, and Blaine was ecstatic that there would be another gay couple in residence - even if Jeff’s hyperactivity was a little exhausting for Kurt, especially when he asked a million questions a minute.

Then came Santana and Brittany, along with Eugene, whose hair had gotten darker than when he had been a baby and was now sporting little spectacles on his freckled face. Their reason for coming was that with Nick and Jeff gone, the only other sexual minority individuals left were the Berry’s and Karofsky, and while the community wasn’t an intolerant place, it was still nice to have other people around that understood where you were coming from.

The spring after Santana and Brittany came is when Eden really boomed. Along with new settlers from around the continent, all of the other “good” Warblers descended on Eden - some with spouses now. The cold weather in the North was cited as the reason for all their trekking, but Kurt noted fondly how everyone who had come from that area were those that he and Blaine counted among friends.  Perhaps he wasn’t as alien to them as he felt in the past.

In the heat of the summer, which Kurt didn’t want to admit was too damned hot for his liking, was when Trent and Kitty and their brood arrived, a horse drawn wagon in tow. He had been underneath a golf cart, trying to figure out how to make the engine less pathetic, when Blaine’s voice lifted him out of his grumbling and cursing and prompted him to shuffle out into the light. Along with Trent, Kitty, and the kids Kurt already knew, there was now a baby girl and Kitty was almost due with yet another baby. Before he could even stand up and wipe the grease off his hands, Kurt found himself enveloped in hugs from Kitty and Isaac that left him gasping for air.

“You’re alive!”

“Not for long if you keep making him struggle for air, dear,” Trent noted to his over enthusiastic wife and as Kitty and Isaac pulled back, Kurt noticed how Trent now had a cane at his side, clearly handcrafted with designs burnt into the wood.  

Suffice it to say that Trent and Kitty got one of the larger suites left in the resort and little Vicki was in children heaven. Most of their friends had kids around her age, and suddenly there was need for more childcare and another school teacher. It wasn’t uncommon to have children racing down the halls as they played tag with one another and if anyone had an issue with children, they kept it to themselves because the average age in Eden was dropping rapidly with each new addition to the settlement.

And as their daughter got older, Kurt couldn’t help but notice how Blaine aged too. At first, it was the odd white hair mixed in with his curls such that seeing one could be blamed on a glint of light hitting his hair the right way, but as Vicki turned six, Kurt had to pause on her birthday morning to look at his sleeping husband and how the white hairs had invaded his scruff and the hairs around his temple in a way he could no longer deny. What was worse was that when Kurt looked in the mirror in their room, he couldn’t see that he had aged at all in the past few years.

That was the way things went, and Kurt did his best not to talk about it, because talking meant it was real, and real things were things he had to deal with. Besides, he was happy, and busy for that matter. People still approached him for all manner of help - be it to establish a nearby settlement because the resort was getting too crowded, or to discuss establishing a new form of currency. The more he didn’t want to be involved, the more involved he was, until finally Kurt just accepted the position reluctantly when, just as someone had once referred to he and Blaine as husbands without their being a marriage, people began calling him their mayor even though there had been no election.

So he had to be firm, and tough, and learn to be more diplomatic - though nothing taught him more about those things than raising his daughter and having to be the one to tell both Elizabeth and Blaine not to spoil her as he learned to negotiate with the young woman his daughter was developing into - much to his chagrin.

On her thirteenth birthday was when her magic made itself known. She was blowing out the candles on the cake that Brittany had baked for the party when Isaac, who had an obvious crush on Vicki that Kurt was still trying to figure out how to end, reached to pat her back in a congratulatory manner. As Vicki laughed and turned his way, he made a slight gasp - the only warning to what was about to happen. As Vicki’s cheeks became plumper and her developing chest flattened out, Isaac sprouted a few inches higher and his features became more chiseled.

It only lasted a moment, and the changes reversed themselves when Vicki yelped and pulled away from the table, running into the room that adjoined her dad’s.  

That was the end of the party, and after Elizabeth checked out Isaac to ensure he was alright, she came to speak with both Blaine and Kurt who were worriedly hovering outside the teenager’s locked door.

“She’ll need training.”

“Is she alright though? What happened?” Blaine sputtered as Kurt pressed his ear against the door, hearing sobs that made his heart crack wide open.

“She clearly has powers… and ones that seem to have the potential to be dangerous if she can’t be trained.”

As much as time had slowed down since they had settled Eden, it sped right back up after Elizabeth made that proclamation. Using portal coins, Ilu and trainers were spoken to, books were researched, and Kurt had to have a number of long, sad conversations with Vicki - who admitted that she knew she had power but didn’t want anyone else to know. Since most of her best friends were human, she just wanted to be like them.

Kurt was completely empathetic.

A trainer was found, along with a couple Ilu who wanted to study and assist Vicki in developing her gift - which seemed to be a rare one indeed, such that it had no particular name. Instead of playing after school with her friends, Vicki instead spent much of her time training, trying to control the power she had, and trying to find a way to use it. Kurt was sad to have to see her give up a significant portion of her youth, and guilty about having been the reason, genetically, that she had to deal with it.

It was when Vicki was sixteen, undeniably a woman, and one that Kurt had to keep potential suitors away with with a well-developed threatening glare, that Kurt finally understood the extent of her abilities.

He was sitting back with Blaine in their bed, each of them reading a book, Blaine now with reading glasses, when Vicki walked in and plopped herself at the end of the bed causing them both to bounce up a bit and set down their books at the clear indication that she wanted their attention.

“Dad,” she directed at Blaine. “You’re getting old.”

Blaine wrinkled up his brow, more wrinkles than there had been ten years prior when Kurt had examined him in bed.  “... thank you? Did you just figure that out?”

Vicki shook her head. “No. But I wondered why you always got grey hair and lines around your eyes while Daddy stayed the same… and then, in training, they explained it… how Daddy has blood of long life, and so do I.”

Kurt winced internally, his jaw going slack as he sat up higher, about to tell Vicki to be quiet. He wasn’t ready to have this conversation. He’d never be ready.

“I know, sweetheart,” Blaine admitted, peeking sadly over at Kurt before looking back to her. “But that’s okay.”

“No. It’s not okay, and I’m going to fix it.”

Kurt and Blaine both cocked their heads, almost comical in how much it was in unison, as Vicki grabbed a hand from each of them before, without warning them, she sent some kind of energy between them. It made Kurt hum inside, warmed him. For the instant it happened, he could almost feel the tie that had bound him to Blaine, wrapped around his hand and connected to Blaine’s.

It wasn’t until Vicki dropped their hands, her blue eyes twinkling and her mouth upturned in joy, that Kurt glanced back to Blaine and had to gasp when he saw what their daughter had done.

Before him was Blaine, but younger. Looking like he did the day Kurt met him.  

“I didn’t want to ask. It seemed like a time that asking for forgiveness was better than asking for permission…” Vicki murmured, eyes still bright and twinkling.

“What…?” Blaine reached up to feel his face over since both Vicki and Kurt were staring at him, and then got up to look in a mirror. “What did you do, baby?”

“I channeled some of daddy’s life into you. I balanced it.”

“What?”

“Vicki!” Kurt blurted out, eyes darting between his fresh faced husband and his brilliant daughter. “This is amazing!”

“But…” Blaine managed to pull his eyes away from his reflection to look at Kurt, who apparently hadn’t changed noticeably given how no one was focusing on him too much. “That means you’ll die sooner!”

“It means I don’t have to be without you either!” Kurt retorted, reaching over to squeeze Vicki’s knee in thanks. “It’s something I’ve dreaded since the day I fell for you… I never wanted to lose anyone I loved ever again.”

“But this doesn’t guarantee I’ll live longer…” Blaine said, hands gesturing outwards animatedly. “It just means I won’t age out as fast. I could still get mortally wounded or something...”

Kurt stood up and wrapped his arms around Blaine in what was a rare display of open affection in front of Vicki. “It’s a gift.. and our daughter is the best daughter in the world for giving it to us.”

The pleased chuckle behind him told Kurt that Vicki was enjoying the response, and he told himself that he needed to get her the best gift ever for her upcoming seventeenth birthday because - damn - she deserved it.  Not only was she the best gift Kurt had ever gotten in his life, but she had given him the second best gift in the world - a long life for Blaine, even if it was at the expense of shortening his own.

People were shocked, naturally, at Blaine’s change - but they didn’t ask about it save for Mercedes commenting that Blaine needed to share his anti-aging secrets jovially.  Magic, for all its mystery, had come to be accepted as a norm.  It didn’t solve all problems, but it did create some unique solutions and as Kurt reflected one day on how he had so hated it at one point in his life for spurring the events that would lead up to his father’s death, he realized that without it he may have never had Blaine, or Vicki, in his life and for all the struggles and all the sacrifices he had made in getting them - he knew it was worth it.  It had all been worth it.

 

* * *

 

_**I have to apologize for taking so long to post this final chapter.  The truth is that this is, by far, my favourite fic I’ve done, and as I noted in the preamble, a world I want to have published one day.  As such, it was difficult to bring it to a conclusion knowing that Kurt and Blaine’s tale in this world would be over and also that it meant it would be time for me to move onto writing my own world with my own characters - a very scary thought indeed.** _

_**I want to thank everyone who consistently reviewed, as it motivated me to keep writing.  I want to thank those people who offered their insights into the world as it helped me redevelop ideas around it, and I want to thank everyone who read it through.  I don’t have the belief in myself required to write just for my own bemusement, so ultimately it was the reads and reviews that kept me going.** _

_**Thanks to everyone who created media for this story - to date that includes gleeklainebow, crazie-crissie, suitfer, freakingpotter, and rocketsurgery.  Special thanks to Sabby who not only beta’d but was there to bounce ideas and irritations off of.  Couldn’t have done it without her.** _


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